


Survival

by Manuuk7



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 18:30:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12917724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manuuk7/pseuds/Manuuk7
Summary: Reed and T'Pol ended up on an alien planet with just the clothes on their backs. Luckily the planet is uninhabited. Or is it.





	Survival

DAY FIVE – Alpha Shift

Archer and the bridge crew stared in shock at the shuttlepod twirling on itself, obviously dark and empty of any life forms, its charred port side and the gaping hole where its door had been slowly rotating up on the viewscreen again and again.

"Travis, get the grapple."

"Aye, aye, sir." At least Travis had something to do, all Archer could do was wait. "I've got it, sir!"

"Good man. Trip, you're with me. Hoshi, ask Phlox to join us."

Phlox entered Shuttle Bay One right on their heels. They surrounded the shuttlepod, approaching its burnt and dented side with drawn phase pistols. Not that Archer thought phase pistols were required, given the state of the shuttle, but Reed had finally ground them all down about security. Except Reed wasn't there, was he? Archer's jaw set. He stepped into the shuttlepod, visually checked the damage and walked out, calling to Phlox "Doctor, see what you can find."

Archer turned to Trip. "All the cabinets have been ripped open, there is nothing left, no safety equipment, nothing. And of course, the merchandise is gone, too."

"Do you think it was random?" Trip asked.

Archer squinted hard at the shuttlepod, as if perhaps it could tell them the story of what had taken place. But the shuttle remained silent. He shrugged "Hard to tell. It does seem quite a stroke of luck that someone would just have chanced upon a tiny shuttlepod in the immensity of space at the exact moment it was carrying its weight worth of gold in rare minerals."

Trip started walking to the shuttle, stopped, came back, started towards the shuttle again, reminding Archer of a caged animal. Phlox pocked his head out of the shuttlepod at that moment, saw Trip pacing and exchanged glances with Archer. "Perhaps if we analyze the scorch marks?" Phlox deflected, trying to come up with something that would occupy the engineer’s mind.

Archer jumped at the opening. "The residue should tell us who was firing." Archer started calling to T’Pol "T'Pol -" then closed his eyes. Where was T'Pol when you needed her? "Who's replacing T'Pol?" he barked at Trip and Phlox. Of course, they had no idea. Because their commanding officer had not thought to call for replacements. Archer strode to the nearest intercom "Archer to Bridge. Hoshi?"

"Yes, Captain."

"Find out who the next senior crewmembers are in Science and Security, have the security member come to the bridge, send the science one to Shuttle Bay One."

Archer turned back to Trip "Work with them, see what you can find out."

In short time, Trip had determined that the shuttlepod engine's had been fried by enemy fire before the pod was boarded but that the door had been blasted afterwards, but then he already knew that at least one of the occupants had not been surrendered to the vacuum of space because he could still feel the shadow presence of T’Pol, Phlox had found traces of blood in the cabin that were too sparse to have come from an injury and must have resulted from a fight. The science ensign went to analyze the residue in the scorch marks, Trip helping him carry the sample boxes out of the shuttle bay. Archer waited until the two of them had left before turning to Phlox. The doctor knew what he was going to ask before he even did. "The traces were Vulcan blood, Captain" he said. Archer was glad he had waited. He could only imagine Trip’s anguish if he had heard.

Archer glowered at the shuttlepod. Today was the day they were supposed to meet up with Reed and T'Pol after their supply mission to Thanat III. Two days to get there, two days to come back, one day to conduct the negotiations and get the stuff. It had seemed like such a brilliant move at the time, saving Enterprise five full days of travel for what was at heart routine supply mission. Perhaps he should have insisted harder they take a couple of MACOs with them, but Reed had pointed out that if they were attacked in space, the MACOs would do little else than add to the body count. And as far as being on the planet, he and T'Pol were armed and could defend themselves, and the MACOs presence might be counterproductive to clinching the deal, after all trading hubs in the quadrant were not exactly known as places of law and order. Archer wished that there had been MACOs aboard, perhaps they would have rendezvoused as planned.

Or perhaps there would just be another two crew members to lose sleep over.

xx

"Klingons, sir"

"Klingons?!" in that area of space? What would Klingons be doing so far away from their quadrant. All of a sudden, Archer thought back to the marauders. After all, it was not inconceivable that a loose band of Klingon mercenaries, for lack of a stronger word, had found the shuttlepod an easy prey.

"Thompson -" what was the man's name already?

"Udaru, sir"

"Sorry, Ensign Udaru. What does the Vulcan database say about piracy in the quadrant?"

The young man bent on his scanner while Archer repressed a sense of annoyance. Udaru shouldn't have waited for him to ask. Figuring it would take longer than the few seconds T'Pol would have taken, he turned back to Reed's replacement "Any idea what weapons they used?"

The young woman nodded "yes, sir. They used a lower grade of phase canons. Not the kind of material you would typically find on a Klingon vessel. More likely purchased in an outpost, possibly illegally."

Now that was a clear and complete answer. Possibly sensing he was being shown up, Udaru looked up from his scanner. "Sir, according to the database, there are loose bands of Klingons and Orions in the sector. The Orions look for slaves, and the Klingons look for merchandise. They sell any crew members on the ships they loot to the Orions."

Peachy, Archer thought in the silence that suddenly settled on the bridge. Now all they had to find out was where the Klingons or Orions took his people.

He looked over at Trip, who was walking over to the captain's chair. "Any idea where T'Pol is?" Archer whispered. He knew that the two were bonded and he had seen on occasion T'Pol be able to tell where Trip was. But Trip shook his head. "I am not a telepath. All I can say is that she is alive."

Archer looked back at the screen, frowning. Well, that was a start.

xxxx

DAY 6 – at night

The figure materialized in a shimmering of light, then darkness fell again on the forest. T'Pol crouched in tense expectation, trying to discern elements of the landscape under the feeble glow of the single moon. She could make some darker mass among the greys surrounding her. Traveling far was not an option, the lighter grey of jagged outcrops rising nearby meant she could easily step off a ledge into an abyss. She started hobbling towards the darker shades, reasoning that her white jumpsuit would be better hidden there. Fifty yards, then one hundred yards, and the darker mass became a grove of trees. She crouched behind a tree trunk, as close to the ground as she could.

A second beam of light materialized right where she had been standing a few minutes before, and coalesced into another humanoid shape. This time the figure seemed to be seeing more easily, and looked right and left, seeking something. Then a voice called, not loudly enough to reverberate very far "T'Pol?"

T'Pol breathed in relief. That was Lieutenant Reed. She got up and stepped away from the tree. She could not see him but she was confident that he could see her and would walk to her. As predicted, a couple of minutes later, he was standing by her side. She could hardly see his features. "I overloaded the transporter before I beamed down," he quickly said. "They'll need a shuttle to come down to the surface. That won't be until tomorrow, because of the night."

She nodded, then thinking perhaps he could not see her do so, said "We need to find a hiding place before tomorrow morning. Can you see around you?"

Reed looked at her in surprise "Of course, the moon is out. Why, can't you?" he added, wondering.

"Vulcans have very poor night sight" she replied. "I am unable to see much right now."

Reed nodded, then realizing she could not see it, said it out loud "No worries, I'll be your copilot." Putting motion to word, he looked around him and went on "We're on what seems to be a somewhat flat grounds on the slope of what could be a mountain or a steep hill. The area where we are is only a few hundred square yards wide. We can choose to go down the slope or up the slope."

"Let's go up the slope, their expectation will be that we went down."

"Agreed." Reed nodded again. People's first reaction was to go down, away from the mountain, and that's where the Klingons would assume they went. He eyed her cautiously "Are you ok to walk?"

"I'll be fine." T'Pol replied. Reed didn't say anything. He was dubitative she would be. He knew that the dark strikes and stains on her white uniform were blood. The Klingons knew humans to be a frail species, so they had taken their anger and frustration out on her rather than him, repeatedly. Reed had heard the sounds of the beatings, amid the repeated warnings 'not her face, not her face'. They were going to sell them to the Orions and needed to keep their merchandise looking blemish-free.

They proceeded, he leading the way, mindful to stay within a yard or so at most, so she could see him and follow. They had walked another five hundred yards, slowly, as the brush was getting thicker ahead of them, when without a sound she literally folded behind him. Fortunately, he heard her and was at her side in an instant. "What's wrong," he asked, crouching at her side. She was trying to catch her breath, arms wrapped around herself, hands clutching at her sides. "...rib..." she hissed between two gasping breaths.

"Let me see". Calling on his first aid and all his field experience, Reed gingerly prodded along the side she presented, quickly feeling the end of the broken rib pointing beneath her skin. He knew what to do but it was going to hurt. He got in position, apologizing for the physical contact, got ready and warned her "Brace yourself" at the exact same time he yanked hard and reset the rib. A trick he had learned in Section 31. There was a sharp cry, quickly extinguished. He allowed her a few minutes to recover, then asked "Ok now?"

T'Pol nodded. "I should be ok" she said and got back up again.

They forged ahead, more slowly as the ground progressively got uneven. Reed had to be careful where he stepped, mindful that the Vulcan behind him would follow in his footsteps, and careful to find the most secure footholds. He stopped when the ground dipped suddenly, or they would have stepped into a brook gently flowing downhill. "We'll follow it upstream," whispered Reed. He wasn't sure why he whispered, there was nobody else around but various animals hooting and screeching their way through the night. "The safest would be to actually walk in the water," he added in a normal voice that sounded way too loud in the silent environment "so that their animals can't smell us".

T'Pol looked at him sharply, or where she thought his face was, but they really didn't have much choice. "Agreed" was all she said. He would be unaware how distasteful the idea of walking in water would be to a Vulcan.

The water was cold, very cold, and the footing was treacherous. They each fell to one knee or the other at least a dozen times, until they finally came to a wall of stone from under which the water bubbled. Reed looked up at the huge mass of the boulder in front of him, he couldn't even tell where the top was. By his estimate, they had walked long enough that they were well beyond the point where any kind of hound would pick up their scent, canine or otherwise. He worked his way up the embankment, then turned and helped T'Pol do the same.

Reed considered. They were half-wet, which in the case of one Vulcan female was not good at all as the water was cold and the air getting colder, she was hurt in spite of her declaration otherwise, Reed could tell by the way she moved, devoid of her usual grace, they were both exhausted and famished, and they had just escaped from a bunch of rabid Klingon pirates. They needed shelter, and fast, before dawn came.

T'Pol must have been thinking along the same lines, for she seemed to answer his thoughts, saying "There may be natural shelters if we keep going up." Reed nodded, praying she was right. He looked up, trying in the glow of the moonlight to find the best path to negotiate the rising slope, and stepped forward.

In the end, what they found was not much of a shelter, but it would suffice, as T'Pol had said. It was a natural lean-to created when one giant boulder fell on top of another, a thin and narrow triangular wedge open on both sides but so narrow that it would take much luck, or lack of luck, for anyone to see them, too narrow for them to do much else but sit and wait. But sitting idly was a great deal better than anything they had done lately. And when Reed realized T'Pol was starting to shake from the cold, he wordlessly got up, and went to sit behind her, apologizing for the contact while claiming the logic of it, and then she was sitting between his legs and he had his arms around her, and the ensuing warmth lulled him to sleep with his head against the rocky wall while her head rested against his chest.

Fortunately, the black-hulled shuttle that flew over the forest when the sun rose was never angled so as to glimpse in between the rocks. Instead, the Klingons that stepped onto the downhill flats with their targs followed the tracks left by the two escapees until they reached the brook and, kicking the whimpering hounds confusedly running in place where the tracks disappeared at the edge of the stream, took broad strides downstream, calling the targs after them, contentedly certain they would soon find the fugitives.

And when the warming sun woke Reed and he saw the black triangle of the shuttle downhill, he hurriedly woke T'Pol up and they snuck out of the nook and worked their way to the other side of the hill, hidden from sight by the vegetation that grew all the way to the boulder line, until they reached a spot where they could see and not be seen, and they waited for their enemy's next move.

And when the Klingons walked back up several hours later, angry and cursing, lashing at their targs and firing haphazardly at anything that moved, Reed was there to watch them stomp in place and disgustedly check their useless scanners until one, then all of them, gave a guttural scream that shook the leaves of the forest, before they got back on the shuttle and left.

And they realized they were alone on an alien planet, with just the clothes on their backs and no way to alert the Enterprise.

Reed was starting to hate away missions.

xxx

DAY SEVEN – morning

With the Klingons gone, they could finally take stock of where exactly they had ended. The lean-to was right above the vegetation line, almost touching it, affording them a view, albeit limited, of what lay below, which seemed to be nothing else than forest and more forest. The pale dual suns threw tan shades on the rocky outcropping that towered over their heads. Wherever they were, it was at the base of some type of mountain or at least a steep hilltop, naked of all vegetation.

From the lean-to vantage point, the forest extended as far as the eye could see in what seemed to be an endless and regular pattern of groves and clearings. They debated relocating, as the fact that the beam-down coordinates were hard-coded in the Klingon ship's database meant this was a routine landing point and they would probably be back. But the price of the rare minerals that Reed and T'Pol had procured on Thanat III and that were appropriated by the Klingons fortunately dwarfed even the combined prospective slave-market income of a little-favored human and a sought-after Vulcan, which meant the Klingons would be looking to sell their riches before they sacrificed any more time locating the fugitives. It also meant that they would eventually be back to make good on their money.

By necessity, their attention next turned to whether there were any resident life forces able or willing to feast on a couple of bipeds, one copper-based and the other iron-flavored. As far as Reed was concerned, the two of them were a smorgasbord of alien temptations. From experience, if anything out there wanted to feast on them, it would come and find them, attracted either by scent, subliminal vibrations, telepathy, or whatever else it was that made it a failsafe bet that anything that could eat them, would. The silver lining to that cloud was that they didn't need to go too far and look too hard, actually it was preferable to not go too far nor look too hard lest they make a premature encounter with some potential predator. If something out there was waiting maw agape for them, there was no need to rush and find it.

That clinched the decision to not relocate right away, but only once they were acclimated to the planet and had a better understanding of the topography and fauna. Reed's leaning towards staying put also being motivated by the fact that it would be easier for T'Pol once she had somewhat healed. The object of his concern was walking to where he stood right below the lean-to, staring at the undulating forest below them and considering their options.

"How's the rib?" he asked. He noticed she was favoring her right side, though the broken rib was on the left. "It is better, thank you." Her voice was not strong. Reed clenched his fists. He wanted to apologize for being human, with frail limbs and bones, so that she alone had to endure the wrath of their kidnappers. T'Pol's eyes widened slightly then she turned squarely to him. "There is no need to remonstrate yourself, Lieutenant, the Klingons are the ones who bear responsibility for their actions." She let the words sink in then added "Actually, if they had treated both of us equally, you would have been incapacitated and we would not have been able to escape from their ship, nor to avoid recapture once on the planet if we had managed to reach it." Reed smiled slightly at the attempt to cheer him up. Though she had a point.

Actually, it had been the Klingons blind assumption of human frailty that had eventually worked in their favor. His thoughts turned back to their escape.

xx

Reed felt the change in the hum of the ship, deducted that they had gone to impulse. Then the hum had died entirely and he cautiously figured they may be orbiting a planet. And if they were orbiting a planet, their options for escape had just doubled. His thoughts so far had been spent on ways they could overpower their kidnappers, find a shuttle and fly away, each step on that chain being fraught with increasing complexities, from the possibility there might not be a shuttle on board to the fact he didn't read Klingon and had no idea how to fly their shuttle, forget avoid a pursuing Klingon ship.

But hope and scheming had kept his mind on the lookout for any potential opportunities, and he soon noted a lone guard brought their meager daily food rations. When the guard saw the Human lying unresponsive on the floor of his cell, probably from the nervous shock of having been captured, he stepped inside to turn him over and check for vital signs. Reed was ready and slammed the heavy iron manacles right about where he estimated the Klingon's head to be, hitting pay dirt. The Klingon reeled backward and Reed lunged at his mid-section, groping blindly for the guard's pistol belt and managing to grab his weapon with one hand, not even bothering to get it fully out of its holster before he fired, because he was no physical match for the Klingon. He hoped the weapon was set on stun, though if he were honest about it he didn't really care either way. The guard dropped and Reed stepped out of the cell, still holding the pistol awkwardly in manacled hands.

It was a short matter to cross the empty corridor to T'Pol's cell. He thanked their lucky stars that no code was necessary to open the door. She turned her head when she heard him, started to rise awkwardly from where she had been laying down, holding her left arm tight to her body. The Klingon weapon made short work of her manacles and Reed started to suspect perhaps it had not been set on stun. She freed him in turn and he led the way out to the corridor, scouting for any signs someone else was coming. He knew from when they had been brought on board, she unconscious and dripping blood from a shallow head wound, that the transporter was on the same deck as the cells and had committed the path to memory. It was a simple matter to backtrack to the transporter room.

Reed checked the coordinates already laid-in. He couldn't tell where they ended and if they would re-materialize on the planet that he had seen rotating through the portholes or somewhere in deep space. He motioned T'Pol to the transporter pad. "What about you?" she hissed." "Don't worry, I'll be right behind you" he replied. He pushed what he thought was the correct control and she shimmered out of sight. He could only hope she landed somewhere on the planet below. If she didn't, he would soon be joining her into oblivion. First, though, he had a phase pistol to overload.

xx

In the end, they hadn't materialized in the vacuum of space, the coordinates were indeed on the planet, and now they were stranded there. An improvement in a lot of ways, but still lacking in many others. "We need to get back to Enterprise," he said to T'Pol. _Talk about stating the obvious_ , the thought came unbidden to his mind.

T'Pol didn't answer, her full attention was on an evaluation of their situation and what they had at their disposal, assessing different scenarios and their probability of successful completion, considering what was required for their survival, for leaving the planet, for contacting Enterprise, for avoiding future pirates, and discarding options that were unviable, too complex, would take longer than their life span or were simply and purely impossible. What was left was not much.

"Enterprise will eventually locate our shuttlepod," she concluded.

"Yes, and by then we may be a few bones bleached under the sun." Reed snorted.

T'Pol looked at him sharply. "I thought you were a trained operative." As accurately predicted, that pricked Reed's ego and he stood at his full height. "I can certainly survive on this planet" he replied. "Good, I am V'shar-trained myself, so can I" T'Pol calmly said. Suddenly Reed almost burst out laughing. It was true. Here they were, two trained operatives on a survival mission on an uninhabited, possibly, planet. This could actually be fun. In a very British way.

xxx

DAY SEVEN – Beta Shift

Enterprise was orbiting Uu'z'tik IV the Orion processing station for this corner of space, which coordinates and passcode they had received courtesy of Vulcan intelligence services. It seemed that even after the ascension to power of T'Pau the Vulcans had not changed their policy of frowning upon any hostile action involving their citizens. They had relayed through Admiral Gardner the need for Enterprise to be discreet both about the provenance of the passcode and coordinates and also about any action they might need to take towards getting their officers released, if indeed the officers were on the station.

It was not too long ago that the Orions had agreed to drop their pursuit of Enterprise and stop attacking other Starfleet starships in exchange for a consolidation of their merchant rights in the disputed quadrant, and it would not be in either party's interest to jeopardize the agreement.

In essence, the agreement simply meant that Human ships, like Vulcan ones, were protected from direct Orion raids. As always, if the Orions found Humans or Vulcans on other vessels, well, those were fair game. Which was why the Vulcans kept an updated database of Orion station access codes and locations.

"Anything?"

Hoshi had been running sensor scans of the station as they approached. She shook her head. "There are no human or Vulcan biosigns on the station, Captain."

Archer sighed. It would just have been too easy. He turned to Trip "How many kilos of tritanium cobalt do we have on board?"

The Commander looked at him as if perhaps he had misheard. "There are no biosigns on the planet" he repeated.

"I get that" Archer cut him off. "But that does not mean there haven’t been any in the past five days."

Trip nodded in understanding. "We should be able to spare four to ten kilos, Captain, so long as we re-supply in the next couple of weeks."

"Good enough" Archer got up, looked around the bridge. Times like these were when he most needed one of his missing officers, to accompany him down to the planet for negotiations. Trip would be ready getting the cash ready, so to speak, and needed to stay on Enterprise. He needed Hoshi there as well to keep an eye on communications in case of an emergency. "Ensign Mayweather, you're coming with me," he said as he left the bridge.

Travis glanced at Hoshi in semi-consternation. Being born in space, going planetside always gave him butterflies in the stomach. And not only was he going stateside, he was going with his commanding officer, so there was no room for screw-ups on his part. And not only was he going with his commanding officer, he was going with Archer, who was not always the most cautious operator. If the Orions took hostages and a situation developed where one of them had to be left behind, he knew which one that was going to be. Still, it was an honor to be asked to accompany the Captain on a negotiating mission, and that somewhat consoled Travis as he got up from his station, following Archer into the turbolift.

xxx

DAY SEVEN – afternoon

They had set up a day camp further downhill, close to where the brook came out of the stone sheer, where the slope leveled briefly before angling down again on all sides. That afforded them a view on the area the Klingons had used as a landing pad while still being far enough to mount an escape if or when the shuttle came back. They decided to keep the lean-to as a shelter for the night until they either found or built a larger one. There were enough fallen branches and boughs lining the ground and Reed used the time to weave two panels to close the sides of the lean-to so nothing could approach them without warning. This took care of water and shelter. All that was left was figure out a food supply. That would ensure their survival on the planet surface but would be insufficient to reach the stars. Reed caught T'Pol looking at the top of the rocky hilltop, hands behind her back, leaning ever so slightly to her left. He got up to looked alongside her. "If we had some kind of beacon, that would be a good place to put it," he said.

She turned to him, "Indeed, Lieutenant," paused for a couple of seconds, "now we only need procure a beacon."

There was always a rub.

xx

The rub was that without a scanner it was impossible to determine which of the vegetation was safe for T'Pol to consume. Things were a lot easier for Reed, at least in theory. There was game around, small lemming-like creatures that scampered out of sight as soon as they approached, and with a little skill and luck he would be able to get some protein. And with even more luck, keep it down. But plants could kill in a heartbeat, and neither of them were too keen on the eventuality. "Logically," T'Pol was saying, "any plant that does not kill the indigenous life forms you are able to consume should be safe for me to eat."

"Well, by that logic," Malcolm retorted "we'd first have to make sure you can consume the indigenous life forms. The fact I can does not mean they're safe for a Vulcan." Translated, it meant, 'I don't want to be a damn guinea pig'.

"Vulcan and human metabolism are close enough that while tastes may differ we should be able to consume the same foods." T'Pol replied, thinking back to what Dr. Phlox had told her at the beginning of their first mission.

One of them was going to get hungry sooner rather than later, Malcolm ruefully reflected. And since he was the frail human with a frail system and Vulcans could go without food and water longer, it would be him. He sighed at the unfairness of it all. "I need weapons to hunt with" was all he replied, and he went to search for a broken branch that could look like the beginning of something. Thankfully he had a whole arsenal of possible weapons in his head, starting with aboriginal clubs, and many sharp improvements that he could bring to them.

Behind him, T'Pol was closely examining the vegetation. She inspected a leaf from a tree, pulled on it. When nothing happened, she raised an eyebrow and proceeded further down, to the next clump of trees. For his part, Reed was scanning the ground around, looking for any dead wood that would be close to a club. He almost laughed when after only a few yards he came upon a branch lying on the ground that had almost the required shape, even with a bulbous mass at one hand. He picked it up and felt its weight, how it was balanced along the shaft. He would have a hard time whittling anything as eminently suitable as what he had in hand. He went back to where T'Pol was, carrying the club on his shoulder, Neanderthal-style. She didn't look up when he approached, still carefully examining the surrounding vegetation, seemingly preoccupied.

xxx

DAY EIGHT – Alpha Shift

It had cost them five kilos of tritanium cobalt to find that no Humans or Vulcans had been processed in the past seven days, well before the shuttlepod first left Enterprise. They were now on their way back to the rendezvous point, scanning for any alien vessel but also dropping to impulse power at every inhabitable planet along the way to check for possible biosigns. The yellow green planet on the screen was the third such planet. The first two had not yielded anything.

 

"Nothing, sir" Ensign Udaru announced. "No biosigns."

Archer set his jaw, avoiding looking in Trip's direction. There were not that many planets between this one and the rendezvous point, at least none that were remotely viable for Humans or Vulcans.

The planet was about to disappear from the main screen and Archer was thinking hard about what they could do next in terms of searching for the missing officers. He wished Reed was there, he had the training and instinct for finding those who didn't want to be found. So did T'Pol for that matter, she had been a V'Shar operative. But of course, the two officers that were missing were Reed and T'Pol. There were days when being a starship captain just wasn't all that it was supposed to be.

They would reach the rendezvous point within the next few hours. And then…

Archer looked over at Trip. Suddenly something Trip asked when they first found the shuttle jumped back to his mind. What if this was not random? He narrowed his eyes at the screen. If it weren't random, there was only one place where a plot could have been fomented. Suddenly the path ahead was crystal clear.

"Mr. Mayweather, lay in a course for Thanat III."

Travis turned slightly as if to look at him, then turned back and punched in the course. It was not seemly for an Ensign to question a Captain's orders.

Trip looked up from his console, then walked over to Archer. "So you think this was a set-up...?"

Archer shrugged at Trip "I'm always wary of things that are too good to be true. Klingons pirates who loot merchandise usually found in freighters randomly attack a two-person shuttlepod and hit the lottery? Even I don't have that kind of luck."

Archer didn't need say more. His luck in getting out of dire straits had become somewhat legendary.

xxx

DAY EIGHT – morning

"I know you're limping" Reed told the figure standing behind him. He was crouching on the ground, trying to light a fire. They had painstakingly shaped a dead stick into the proper size, created the support, found some dried vegetation as a starter. Now all that was required was a lot more speed and stamina than he seemed to be able to come up with. Mentioning her limping was a nice distraction from the herculean task at hand. T'Pol had been trying to minimize it whenever he was around but he had seen her at other times when her limp was more pronounced. Further observation had told him she was also not crouching much, if at all, and getting on her knees seemed out of the question. Uncharacteristically, she didn't retort that she was fine.

Reed turned to look at her, straightening up from where he had been trying to start the fire. "How bad is it?" he asked. Survival required knowing all the potential obstacles in their way.

"I would need to be off my feet for a few days" was all she said.

It was obvious there was no way this was going to happen in their current situation. It also meant it was pretty bad. He was faced with the possibility that his survival companion may be out of commission. He frowned slightly. To get a better handle on the situation he would need to know why she was limping.

T'Pol turned to him as if he had asked the question out loud "The Klingon that I rendered unconscious in the shuttlepod kicked me in the leg in reprisal." Reed winced. It must have happened after they had been brought on board, once they were in their respective cells. Three times he had heard the heavy footsteps of several Klingons come down the corridor, stop in front of her cell, followed by the swish of the door then the unmistakable sound of fists hitting flesh, punctuated once or twice by muffled cries, and always the admonition to spare her face.

Snippets of overheard conversation told him that two of the Klingons had come with their posse to settle accounts, furious that they had been bested by a female half their size. The third time had been a kind of general payback. He couldn't understand how there could be any honor in beating up someone half their size and in restraints, but then again that must be a Human point of view. He did however have a healthier respect for small Vulcan females and their ability to mow down a bunch of Klingons in a fight.

Reed winced again, thinking about the heavy steel-toed boots of their kidnappers. That must have hurt like hell. Correction that must hurt like hell. "How's the pain?" he inquired. She looked away "It's manageable."

Reed's mouth set in a thin line. Yeah, right. "Anything broken?" he asked as matter-of-factly as he could.

She considered before responding "I don't think so."

Like that certainly filled him with confidence. He looked back at the fire-starting equipment. Brilliant, bloody brilliant. Stuck on some unknown planet and the one person that he relied on above anything else to save their collective skin was out of sorts.

"Any idea how to get this thing to light up?" he asked rhetorically, changing the topic of conversation, pointing at the sticks. He had ample field experience starting fires in survival situations but he didn’t know why this wood was so resistant to light up.

"You seem to be applying the right amount of speed and pressure at the correct angle," T'Pol replied. "Eventually, the dried vegetation will catch fire."

Reed almost chuckled. That certainly had been helpful. As it turned out, good old anger and frustration were very effective in getting the exact right amount of speed and pressure. When a baby flame burst out and started suckling at the dry moss, Reed felt this was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.

Still, it was not enough to make him forget how hungry he was. His attempts at clubbing the lemming-like creatures the day before had been somewhat unsuccessful. Scratch that. It had been spectacularly unsuccessful considering he needed to approach within an arm's length of the target and the targets were in no mood to cooperate. He was tired of trying to hit things that were scampering before he could even come near. It was T'Pol who had pointed out that lances or anything that could be thrown would be more effective than a club, as they could see the creatures milling around just out of arm reach wherever they went.

In the meantime they were hungry. At least Reed was, he didn't know about T'Pol. The pirates obviously felt feeding their captives was close to a waste of money, which meant he was going on his fourth day without enough food. Lucky for him there was water, but he could feel his energy ebbing. A successful hunt was desperately needed.

"We both will need sustenance soon," T'Pol said, answering his unspoken question about whether she was hungry. Malcolm looked at her in surprise, then caught himself. Of course. She was a V'shar operative. One thing operatives knew better than anyone else was that survival was the name of the game. And nothing else, not religion, family or values, everything was fair game. She would eat meat if there was no other choice, and be fine with it.

"How are the weapons coming?" Reed asked.

Wordlessly, T'Pol offered five well-sharpened arrow-size sticks and two lances that had been rubbed-down to a point over some rock, courtesy of the ample vegetable debris all around. "Now that we have a fire" she added, "we can carbonize the tips of the arrows and strengthen them."

"Ok, but don't you need a bow for the arrows?" Malcolm asked.

"The first kill will be with the lance," T'Pol replied. "That will provide us with the raw materials necessary to string a bow. Perhaps eventually we can graduate to flintstone tools." Malcolm nodded, they would need the guts of whatever it was they managed to kill to build better weapons. Then he caught himself. Was that sarcasm or was she just stating facts?

He could certainly understand sarcasm. This survival thing was getting old already. Training situations were different because there was an end in sight and everyone knew just how long they had to grit their teeth and deal with the cold, the insects, the meager portions, whatever trainers could throw at you that made things extremely uncomfortable. It was something else entirely when one didn't know when the end of the training would come. The thought this lifestyle may be all there was for perhaps months and years made him shiver internally. Hopefully they would get off the planet long before they learned to chip flintstone.

"Time to go hunting, I guess" he announced. Not that there were that many other options.

He took a lance and T'Pol kept the other. She left the short arrow-sticks by the fire. No point bringing weapons that could not be used. They walked a few yards and then he gestured and circled around a few hundred yards, walking back to her in a straight line, using the lance to shake trees and bushes as he went by. The beauty of having another operative with him was that he didn't need to explain much at all. She already knew what he had in mind and how he was going to do it.

xxx

DAY EIGHT – Delta Shift

Archer stepped into the gym, ready to release some of the day's tension. There was nothing much to do while they were rushing to Thanat III and the stress of the wait made it very difficult to focus on routine tasks. He threw his towel across the handles of the elliptical when his attention was snatched by the grunts coming from the other side of the room. Someone was hitting hard at the punching bag, giving it a graceless pounding without any thought to form or efficiency. Archer did a double-take. Was that Trip?

It was Trip. Archer closed his mouth and slowly walked over, partly to confirm what his eyes and brains were telling him and partly to ask if Trip was all right. In all the years he had known the Engineer, he had never seen him use the boxing gear. Trip spent enough time lugging things around in Engineering and fighting with recalcitrant relays that he didn't feel the need to pursue boxing after hours.

"Something upset you?" he asked as he came near, getting straight to the heart of the matter.

Rivulets of sweat were dripping off Trip's brow and neck, witness to the fact he had been punching the bag for quite a while. He stopped and drew the back of a gloved hand across his forehead. Then turned to Archer. "What do I have to be upset about?" he pretty much snarled. "The fact that T'Pol is missing and we have no clue where she is? In what universe would that be upsetting?"

Archer brought his hands up in a pacifying gesture. Why was it that his senior officers all had a well-developed sense of sarcasm? He didn't remember seeing it as part of the qualification criteria for Starfleet. Was it him? Perhaps Reed was right about not having enough discipline on board. He shook his head. He hated it when he involuntarily thought about Reed or T'Pol. All it did was add to his sense of loss.

"It's okay" he promptly offered. "I'll let you at it, then." And he prudently crossed back over to the exercise equipment section. While he was exercising, he kept an eye on Trip, though. The engineer was ordinarily a jocular man and Archer had never seen him exhibit quite so much rage.

xxx

DAY EIGHT – Afternoon

A small fire was discreetly burning in the middle of the forest, and Reed was tasting his very first kill on the planet. So far so good. He forced himself to take micro bites, then wait for any symptoms that might develop, when his whole ravenous body was screaming at him to eat the whole thing right away, suck the marrow and spit out any remaining bones. But he had split up the small animal with T'Pol. She was still looking at her portion.

Reed knew it would take quite a while before she touched it, waiting until there really was no other option. He could have told her already that there was really no other option. They had found no fruit or berries and there was no assurance that any of the vegetation was safe to eat, they couldn't find an animal that seemed to eat the plants. Actually, outside of the lemmings, they couldn't find any animal, period. They did hear shrieks of flying something or other at night, but had no idea what exactly that was.

His thoughts went back to his last full meal, on Thanat III, before they met the trader and negotiated to buy the minerals. It had been a perfectly pleasant meal, and yet he had managed to grouse about the lack of proper tea and being served some unknown fowl that the local cook had decided was what Englishmen meant by 'roast beef'.

Now he was on some alien planet, unshaved and unwashed, with poor prospects of ever again knowing the luxury of a full stomach and clean skin, having something close to half a lemming for dinner, and that last meal on Thanat III shone in his mind's eye as if it had been a twelve-course feast. Yes, he would never again complain about food.

Actually, he wouldn't mind going back to that small place for some creative roast beef. It had really been a lovely meal. He wondered if T'Pol would agree to go with him. For the first time in quite a while he felt warm and full. Visions of mashed potatoes were dancing in his head. Sleep was threatening to overtake him. It would not be bad to take a nap but first he had something to do.

He got up and walked over to T'Pol. "I'll be back in a short while". She angled an eyebrow at him and he noticed she still hadn't touched her food. Well, he certainly couldn't blame her, it had taken him long enough and if he had not been nearly beside himself with hunger, he might still be waiting himself.

He started walking down the slope, looking around for fallen branches and sticks. He had a specific idea in mind, of a stick that could serve as a crutch, something that T'Pol could use to get the weight off her leg. He crossed a small clearing, noting the clumps of trees lining it. Two trees, three trees, two trees, three trees. The repetition was interesting. He pushed through the underbrush and found himself in another small clearing, almost indistinguishable from the first one. The same clumps of trees were lining the clearing, two trees, three trees, two trees, three trees.

All of a sudden his heart started beating wildly and an almost paralyzing feeling of anxiety seized him. A single thought permeated his mind: he had to get away. He turned around to retrace his steps, intent on escaping whatever it was that spooked him, when he saw something lying on the ground. It was a fair-sized branch of almost the perfect shape and height for the crutch he had been thinking about. He hesitated, looking around for any reason to be wary, then picked it up, absent-mindedly balancing it in one hand as he had done with the club. The weight was perfectly distributed. Perhaps he just had been lucky twice in a row, with the club and now with the crutch. Not looking back, stick in hand, he hastily made his way back to their fire pit, breathing hard.

T'Pol looked up when he approached. He noticed she had started eating. He offered her the crutch. "I thought this might come in handy," he said. She wordlessly took it, nodding her thanks. Then she look up more sharply at him "Where did you find this?" she asked.

"I went a couple of clearings out, and it was just there, laying on the ground," Reed explained.

T'Pol didn't say a word, silently examining the stick in her hands, how it forked in the right kind of 'y' to nestle someone's armpit, how the length was almost exactly adapted to her height. She looked to be deep in thought.

Reed found that the crushing feeling of anxiety was lessening. He didn't know if it was her presence or the familiarity of the scene that calmed his jumbled nerves. He also didn't know why he had felt such a pervading sense of foreboding. He felt a little bit foolish. The forest was quiet, the pale suns were finishing their arc over the horizon, and their encampment with its small fire was the picture of bucolic serenity. And yet, he couldn't deny the intense feeling of anxiety that had propelled him almost running from where he had gone deeper into the woods. He stood where he was, eyeing the deeper part of the forest with a sense of unease. Was there something there that he didn't see?

Her dinner done, T'Pol shallowly buried the remnants of the animal. "We need to pack up for the night" she said. Reed helped her get up, handed her the crutch and she took a few tentative steps while he covered the burning wood with ashes, it would still be warm enough in the morning for another fire. The crutch seemed to be helping.

They made their way back up the slope in silence. Their little triangular lean-to seemed even more welcoming to Reed, being out of the forest as it was. They had found that with a little wiggling they could both lay down in its length now that there was no risk of being seen from a shuttle. It was not the most comfortable spot, but operatives knew how to sleep standing up, eyes wide open, and this would do until they found something better.

xxx

DAY NINE – early morning

Reed woke up feeling surprisingly refreshed. He stretched, turned on his side… and brusquely brought himself to a sitting position, realizing that he was alone and he had been laying down across the whole length and width of the lean-to, the lower part of his legs protruding through the entrance.

Where was T'Pol? He felt a stab of momentary panic at the thought perhaps something had come by in the middle of the night and taken her away, then forced himself to calm down and consider all options, starting with the most mundane, which was that she had gotten up earlier than him and left him to sleep while she did whatever it was she might be doing.

He got up, pushed aside the woven panel of boughs covering the entrance to the lean-to, and proceeded down the steep slope, towards their fire pit. He had hardly taken three steps when she rounded the stones up the slope from him, leaning on the crutch he had provided.

"Commander," he greeted her. Reed couldn't hide the sense of relief that washed through him.

"I apologize for concerning you, Lieutenant," T'Pol told him. "I went to see how high the outcrop extended." Reed didn't reply, waiting for some further enlightenment. "I was considering" T'Pol went on "that this planet may have some naturally occurring dampening characteristics, based on the absence of lower-level life forms." Reed was surprised, then realized she was right. They had seen no insects the whole time they were there, not even amoebae in the water. The only animals around seemed to be the lemmings, those small long-tailed four-legged creatures they dined on, and whatever flying nocturnals whose shrieks permeated the forest at night. If that's what it was. After the surge of anxiety he had experienced the day before, he was no longer sure.

"That would explain why the coordinates were hard-coded in the Klingon's ship transporter database, as a safe base of operations," T'Pol went on, "If that is the case Enterprise may not be able to distinguish our biosigns."

Just when he thought their plight was improving.

"What do you suggest we do?" Reed asked, annoyed that his upset showed in his suddenly cracking voice.

T'Pol raised an eyebrow but didn't comment. "If the outcrop goes high enough," she said instead, "it might rise over the dampening influence of the forest." T'Pol paused, asked "Your Universal Translator is still operative, Lieutenant?" Reed touched his collar to feel the UT that was sewn each uniform. "Yes, it's still there."

"So is mine. The translators emit a radio frequency signal. If we extract them and raise them above the dampening field…" T'Pol was looking up at the outcrop.

"…Enterprise may be able to pick up the signal." Reed finished. "That's going to be like finding a needle in a haystack..."he added pensively.

T'Pol whipped around "There is not much else on this planet that would generate a regular burst of electromagnetic activity. Unless you have a better option?"

Reed shook his head. No, no better option.

"You will need to climb to the top" T'Pol added.

Reed glanced up the outcrop, could only see rocks as far as he looked. "Any idea how far that thing extends?" he mused.

"That is what I went to reconnoiter this morning" T'Pol answered. "If you go up and around for about five hundred yards, there is a second outcrop, whose top is visible. I estimate it will take about eight hours to reach it."

Eight hours to reach the top, meant about three hours to come down, possibly more, depending on how demanding the way up was, mused Reed.

"I would have to spend the night" he thought out loud.

T'Pol threw him a sideways glance. "You may not have to, if you start early enough. But in all likelihood, yes, you would have to spend the night. I do not believe there will be any predators, and the temperature –"

Reed interrupted her before she could go on "I wasn't worried about it," he explained. "I was just thinking out loud. That won't be an issue."

He couldn't quite tell, but for the first time since he knew her, he had the feeling that T'Pol was personally grateful.

xxx

DAY NINE – Alpha Shift

"Well, what can I do for you?" Phlox cheerfully greeted Trip. A quick and unobtrusive look had already told him the Chief Engineer was not in Sickbay due to a conduit burn or a sliced finger or any of the numerous small accidents that had made him a semi-permanent feature of his establishment.

"Do you have anything for a headache, Doctor?"

Phlox raised his eyebrows in amazement. This was a highly unusual request coming from his patient, whose aches and pains tended more towards the domain of the physical. He pulled his scanner out, starting a cursory review of the engineer's functions, expecting… Phlox frowned, looking at his scanner. This was not what he had been expecting. He looked up at Trip again.

"Can you be more specific about the headache, Commander?"

"I don't know, Doc, it started a couple of days ago."

"When we found the shuttlepod?" the doctor prompted.

"No, actually, it only started a couple of days later," the Engineer replied. "Which is the same as a couple of days ago" Trip added. "I can't explain it, Doc, it just won't go away. And it's getting a little bit worse every day."

Phlox taped the scanner in his hand, thinking. "Any other symptoms?"

"Nah, I don't think so."

"Have you been sleeping, Commander?" Phlox was used to crewmembers who reported an all A-OK status, but then under subtle and accurate questioning, revealed issues and problems that would have put lesser men and women in a hospital bed.

"Well, that's the issue" Trip started, while Phlox rolled his eyes behind him "I have no problem sleeping at all," Trip went on, "it's just that I have these awful nightmares where I … uh, I kill people, you see," he quickly changed tack as he saw Phlox's surprised expression "… that's not what I mean, Doc, it's not like I just go out and kill people, it's just, those are really, really, bad people and they've done something really bad to my family, except I don't know what that is." The engineer was nearly out of breath, having rushed through the explanation in an attempt to pre-empt Phlox's reprobation. "So when I wake up, I just feel angry."

Phlox looked at the readings on his scanner. It just didn't make sense. Well, what Trip had just said made sense, but overall it didn't make sense. "Hmm, I think I need to run more tests" Phlox told Trip "find out what's going on. Your testosterone level is elevated as is your adrenaline." He eyed Trip suspiciously "Are you taking any performance enhancing supplements, Commander?"

"Performance enhancing…?" Trip hazarded, unsure what Phlox was asking.

"That's what I thought," Phlox cut him off. "Come see me after your shift, I need to run a battery of tests."

xxx

DAY NINE – mid-day

The logical approach had been to delay the climb to the next morning and use the time to prepare. If Malcolm was going to spend a day and a half getting to the top of the mountain, he would need food and water for the duration. At least food, thought Malcolm, looking at the small stream they had been drinking from and thinking about how they had no way of carrying water from place to place. The question was which of the few methods available to them they were going to pursue. T'Pol came to join him by the stream, her walk slowed down by the crutch.

"Wood container." He told her. He could see it in his mind's eye, a rather tall piece of wood that they would slowly burn the inside of, until it could hold enough water, about a day's worth, just enough to stay hydrated on the way up, or the way down. If he became confused from dehydration, any fall from the outcrop would be steep and more probably than not deadly. Carrying it would be a challenge, but he would find a way.

"Inner organs" T'Pol countered. Malcolm groaned inwardly. Of course, that was what first came to her mind. There were not that many trees on Vulcan but there were plenty of life forms that could be guiltlessly killed and gutted once they failed to eat you. He couldn't tell her that the thought made him queasy.

"They're kind of small" he retorted. The lemmings', as he had taken to calling them, stomachs and guts were on the diminutive side.

"You would be taking more than one." T'Pol looked surprised it wasn't obvious to him.

The issue was that they could spend hours crafting a wood container or hunting lemmings for food and inner organs but if he was to climb up the hilltop the next morning as they had planned, they didn't have time for both. They stared each other down, except that this time Malcolm was not going to back down.

Was he?

xxx

DAY NINE – Beta Shift

"We have been granted orbit, Captain" Hoshi announced to the bridge. Archer got up from his command chair, paced in front of the screen where they could see the steadily increasing orb of Thanat III as they approached.

"Ensign, can you scan for Vulcan or Human biosigns?" he asked.

Hoshi repressed a sigh. "There are millions of people on the station," she replied, "and probably more than just a few Humans or Vulcans."

Archer looked at her unwaveringly. She hated it. It got her every time. This time she sighed openly "I'll start," she said, and turned to her scanners.

Archer was a bundle of energy, bouncing on the balls of his feet. They had spent the last five days zipping from one point to another, and they were now finally in sight of a potential break in the case. He firmly believed they were going to find something on Tanath III.

Because if they didn't, he was pretty much out of options.

xxx

DAY NINE – afternoon

Malcolm balanced the lance in his hand, making sure his throw would be smooth and on target. Logic had prevailed that they needed the lemmings for food also thus they were killing two birds with one stone. Perhaps after the hunt there would still be enough time to burn out the core of a piece of wood, if he found one large enough. He was trying not to lose focus. They would need five lemmings to provide enough food and water containers for a day and a half and he would get all five if he could. T'Pol had made the first kill the day before and his competitive spirit demanded he not be left in the dust. He released the lance at exactly the right time and it whizzed past his ear and went through the lemming's chest. One down, four to go.

He turned around looking for a place to put the lemming while he kept hunting. And spied a piece of wood about one foot tall and five inches in diameter, which would make a perfectly portable water container once it had been fire-gutted. He looked up and around, trying to see if perhaps someone was there and had brought this for him to find. But there was nothing around except for the slight breeze going through the boughs. Frowning, he picked up the lemming and the piece of wood. He needed to tell T'Pol.

She emerged from the forest soon after Reed arrived back at the firepit, two dead lemmings strung on her lance, navigating the forest floor with her crutch. She saw the slab of wood in Malcolm's hands, and looked up at him. "Where did you find this?" she asked in a soft voice. Malcolm shrugged. "It was lying on the ground waiting for me. I just picked it up."

In spite of her emotional control, T'Pol looked stricken.

"I think we need to talk," Malcolm said.

xx

As foolish as he felt recounting his panic attack of the past day, T'Pol didn't seem to find anything untoward about it. Malcolm finished by recounting how he had found a stick that had the shape of the club he had just been thinking about, a limb that was the right shape and size for T'Pol, and now a slab that seemed to beg to be transformed into a container of sorts. Each time, he had found close to exactly what he had been thinking about. Still, it didn't seem that those happenstances or the perfectly similar and repeating pattern of the forest should warrant the feeling of panic that had gripped him the day before. He told her so.

T'Pol was quiet for a couple of minutes, then she looked squarely at Malcom. "It is alive," she said. In response to his questioning stare, she explained "I believe the forest is one giant organism. The trees and the vegetation are not independent growth but are part of it. "

"Part of it?"

"Have you noticed that the leaves do not separate from their stems? There are no leaves on the ground. There is also a complete absence of any type of herbivorous lifeform. Or insects that would be feeding of the vegetation."

It was true, Malcolm realized, there were plenty of loose branches on the ground, but no leaves. He couldn't quite comprehend how everything around him was part of a single organism. He had never been that much into biology and would never have noticed on his own that there was something off with the flora and the fauna but now that T'Pol had said it he had to admit that the vegetation didn't look like what he would have expected.

"What about the lemmings?" How did they fit into this? And what did they eat? Come to think of it, Malcolm had no idea what the lemmings ate, he had never seen them do anything other than scurry around. He wondered if he should start feeling sick to his stomach.

"I believe they are a parasitic life form. In essence, when we do away with them, we are helping the organism."

Kind of delousing, Malcolm thought, then instantly wished he hadn't. Now he was feeling sick to his stomach. On the other hand, protein was protein. If it meant staying alive, why not eat things that at least didn't look like worms or ticks.

"So what are we?" Malcom asked "Parasites?" He let his voice trail off. Truly, what were they to the organism? If they were just another parasite that could be tolerated, why provide them with some of the stuff they thought about. Malcom had the sudden inkling that the forest was giving him, not them, what he, not they, happened to think of. T'Pol was not part of the equation. But then, T'Pol had a much more disciplined mind, she probably didn't go around thinking about stuff that was not there. He hoped that was the reason.

T'Pol looked down and away before responding and Reed got the sudden sense she was hiding something. "I am not sure, Lieutenant," she replied. "I think we need to consider what the organism is gaining by providing you with objects that you happen to have in mind." So she did notice that it was his thoughts that were being captured, not hers. But why him and not her? What the hell was going on? Was the organism trying to split them one from the other. That was a by-the-book play, split up and weaken the enemy. Which meant they were the enemy, were they. He just was not liking very much where his trail of thought was headed.

"It is not interacting with you at all?" he asked.

T'Pol looked embarrassed. "Actually, I believe that I may already be connected to the organism."

All kinds of alarms went off in Malcolm's brain. He wished she hadn't said that. The same feeling of overwhelming anxiety took hold of him, grabbing him by the throat. He found himself torn between the imperative to run and the conflicting demand to save her. Get a grip, forced himself to calm down enough that he could have a rational conversation, however freaked out he was. "Hold it, hold it," he heard himself say, "what do you mean exactly you are already connected to the organism?!"

T'Pol faced him calmly "I have been able to read your thoughts since we transported down, even though we are not in physical contact and there is no other form of …" she hesitated "relationship between us." She quickly went on as Malcolm started to blush "Once I became aware of it, I raised my mental shields so that I would not inadvertently pick up your thoughts, Lieutenant."

Malcolm eyed her silently while his mind quickly went through all the unnoticed coincidences of the past couple of days, her answering unspoken questions that had just formed in his mind, him thinking how she knew instinctively what he was going to do in the hunt, her coming back at the exact moment he was leaving their shelter and knowing he was concerned. He had a suspicion that perhaps she was inadvertently picking up on a lot more than she realized, in spite of the mental shields. He decided to test his theory out. "Not Lieutenant, Malcolm, call me Malcolm" he thought, loud and clear, keeping that one single thought in his mind for a while, in the same manner he had slightly obsessed on finding a club, then a crutch, then a piece of wood fit for a container. And then he re-focused on what she had just said. If she picked up on it and called him Malcolm, it meant she was much more connected to the organism than she thought…

"Can't you read its thoughts?" he asked.

"I cannot" T'Pol replied.

So there they were, in the middle or on some kind of giant organism that had such telepathic capabilities that it could pick up the more obsessive thoughts of a complete non-telepath and had effortlessly connected to a slightly more telepathic species. And they had no idea if it was good or evil.

T'Pol looked down, then sideways, seemed to mentally square herself. "I am drawn to it."

"What?!"

"I am not sure what exactly this organism is. I know that it is calling to me."

Malcolm stood looking silently at the ground. This was not good on so many levels.

"Perhaps I should stay…" Malcolm started.

She interrupted him "Malcolm,"

 _Kah-ching_! She had called him Malcolm. Shields or no shields she wasn't aware of how much telepathic reading she was really doing, "you need to bring the translators above the dampening field. For both of us."

Malcolm thought it would have been easier if she wasn't hurt, then she could have made the climb herself. Bloody hell, they could have gone up together. And stayed there, away from this, this creepy thing that was giving him what he thought about and turning her into a telepathic sponge. Bloody hell indeed. He remembered the last time he said that. The whole thing was still vivid in his mind.

xx

It had been such a tranquil mission. They had left Thanat III at 0530, the minerals safely ensconced in the carrying safe at their feet. The departure from the planet had been uneventful, and they had headed straight for the rendezvous point in agreement that they would rather wait aimlessly for a few hours in deep space than chance missing Enterprise. They were halfway there, well ahead of schedule, T'Pol was deep in her padd, she never stopped analyzing or categorizing what was around, and Reed was relaxing, auto-pilot firmly engaged, and thinking back over their encounter at Thanat III. The sudden lurch of the shuttlepod as enemy fire hit it square on the side took them both by surprise.

"Bloody hell!" Reed shouted, lunging for the commands of the shuttlepod, trying to keep it from spinning out of control. T'Pol had dropped the pad, moved back to the weapons station, quickly checking her sights for an idea of what was attacking them. "Enemy ship, no recognizable characteristic. Bringing weapons on line. I have them in my sights."

"Fire!" Reed wondered why it was she who was at the weapons station and he who was manning the shuttlepod. Somehow it felt all wrong. They should have anticipated, should have trained for the eventuality of enemy fire, planned their response, made sure that they both would be where they were most efficient. Though it didn't matter much in the face of superior strength, and a fully armed ship had the upper hand against a shuttle.

The next beam of energy from the ship fried their engines. The shuttlepod was now dead in the water, spinning endlessly on itself from the kinetic energy of the blow. The weapons were not down yet and T'Pol managed to hit the ship on one of the passes. It had about the effect of a mosquito swatting an elephant. Reed maneuvered the side thrusters and the shuttlepod stopped spinning.

The clang of a boarding vessel docking onto the ceiling airlock resonated in the small cabin. The hatch opened and a Klingon dropped in. And went straight to the floor in a heap, courtesy of the shuttle's lone Vulcan occupant. That's when Reed realized that T'Pol was angry. The second Klingon followed his companion into oblivion, though not without trading some blows first. That gave enough time for another couple of Klingons to find their way in, the shuttle could not fit more anyway, and the fight was soon over as T'Pol was subdued by a blow to the head from one of their pistols.

Soon he and T'Pol were manacled, but instead of being hoisted unceremoniously up the hatch, as he was expecting, the familiar tingle of a transporter surprised him and he coalesced back onto the Klingon ship. And realized the investment in a transporter room made sense as the Klingons swiftly and efficiently beamed all there was to be beamed from the shuttlepod before they were escorted to their cells, an unconscious T'Pol dangling over one of the Klingons' shoulders.

xx

But that was then and this was now, and they were on some alien planet where something was reading his mind, which was bad enough, and was connected to her mind and calling to her, which was certainly worse. And because he has been distracted with the memories of how they ended up on the planet, the realization of what exactly was happening struck him with the force of a body blow, and he felt a cold hand of fear squeeze his heart and slow his breath.

As T'Pol had said, the question was what the organism was gaining by providing him with what he happened to have in mind. And he knew beyond certainty that what it was gaining was that he was sticking around. The objects were lures.

He was made to stay.

And T'Pol was being reeled in.

xxx

DAY TEN – Alpha Shift

Archer, Trip, and the two MACOs made the small shop look even smaller and the trader couldn't help stealing glances at the MACOs and then looking at his store as if he somehow feared it would burst at the seams. The place was chockfull of tradable items of all types and sizes, from colored curios that might have been boxes of loose tea, harsh tobacco or cosmetics, to replacement parts for small-size injector pumps. A fine dusting on some of the items was proof that trading the merchandise on the floor might not be the primary means of income of the rough-looking figure behind a waist high counter.

Actually, Archer thought, he didn't know if the figure looking across at them was rough-looking. He had automatically assumed that a trader posted on Thanat III and dealing rare minerals out of its back office would not be the most pleasant character. But he had no way of knowing if the blue-skin humanoid facing him would look pleasant to one of its species, with its long trunk-like proboscis and cauliflower ears.

The trader knew they were Starfleet, it was hard to disguise the insignia on their shiny smooth jackets, which, as far as Archer was concerned, meant he knew why they were here. So he had wasted no time concocting some story that would explain the presence of the small troupe in the tiny shop, he simply asked the trader if he remembered a couple of Starfleet officers that came to his shop a week before to buy some materials. The presence, price and delivery of those materials had been more or less negotiated while they were on Enterprise and all that was left for them to do was come to the store, unload close to their weight in credit chips, more than Archer would see in a lifetime, and leave with a fireproof reinforced safe full of very rare and very expensive goodies that Enterprise needed a little of and Starfleet a lot of.

Of course, there was the remote possibility that they had been kidnapped on the way to Thanat III and not on the way back, but Trip was categorical that the miniature erosion in the shuttlepod fuel rods could only be due to the shuttlepod journeying non-stop for three days, which meant they would have made it to the planet.

xx

"Ah, gentlebeings, of course I remember the Human and the Vulcan. An exotic couple." Trip looked up sharply at that but contained himself. The trader was positively oozing polish and charm, which made Archer feel slightly nauseated. "Are they friends of yours?"

"In a manner of speaking," Archer smiled back "we all work for Starfleet. They recommended you to us. Are you Mr. Seel Ewri?" Archer asked, hoping he was not mangling the name too much. The trader smile grew on each side of his nose. "I am Seel Ewri," he said, adding genially "Seel is an honorific, somewhat similar to 'Sir' in your language. Ewri is my name."

Archer smiled back. Next to him, Trip was grinning in shared pleasantness, though his eyes, like Archer's, were hard. Archer turned to look at Trip as if he meant to ask him something, then caught himself and turned back to Seel Ewri.

"Do you remember what they bought? We'd like the same thing." Trip looked at him in shocked silence, then decided to play along. After all, Starfleet had sent its officers to get the supplies, they were missing the officers and the supplies. Even if they found the officers they still needed the supplies.

The trader frowned as if there were so many customers that remembering what a couple of them happened to purchase was beyond the realm of memory. Archer kept a smile pasted on his face, knowing that any trader would remember earning several years of an average income in a single transaction.

"Hum, let me see" Seel Ewri made a show of pulling out a stack of padd-invoices, including some written on physical supports that may have been paper or animal skin. He started going down each pad and invoice line by line, muttering to himself and occasionally shaking his head as if none of the information matched.

Archer knew he was trying to delay and distract but they were prepared to wait him out for as long as he wanted to play this game. Trip, playing the relaxed tourist, started walking in a small circle inside the store, looking at the various sale items as if they held any interest. The merchant was still huffing his way through the padds, tossing one after the other in a pile that was very evidently the 'discarded' pile.

Trip walked back to the counter. "Weren't they buying contraband?" he asked Archer as if somehow he didn't really know.

Seel Ewri froze and his eyes shone with an evil gleam for a second. It was a huge breach of protocol to utter the word in the front store where the security cameras of the customs office might surreptitiously be recording every utterance made. Transactions like the one with the Starfleet officers were done with finesse, both sides talking without seeming to say anything until an arrangement had been finalized.

If these had been real buyers, he would have claimed that they had mistaken him for another trader, that his business was clean and he certainly would never dare think of trading in contraband, and then would have dispatched a couple of trusted helpers to do whatever it took for them to regret having ever coming to Thanat III and make sure they'd never step foot on it again. He needed to get these Starfleet officers and their mean-looking muscle out of the way as quickly as possible.

Archer held a hand up to Trip "Starfleet doesn't buy contraband," he replied, thinking that what Starfleet didn't know wouldn't hurt it and in any case Starfleet showed little interest in finding out the provenance of the rare elements they were procuring in the depths of deep space. Perhaps one day there would be a directive restricting these purchases but in the meantime Starfleet bureaucrats were behind their desks on Earth and starship captains were out there responsible for the safety of their crews and the operation of their ships, and one did what one had to do.

"Ah, yes, I remember" the trader exclaimed, pulling one of the padds off the pile. "Here is the purchase order – five kilos, eight hundred thousand credit chips." He shook his head. "That was a big order."

"Funny how memory fails us" quipped Archer. "Do you remember if they took it?"

Seel Ewri was all smile again. "Of course, of course, they left with the merchandise. Our shop is an honorable one and our customers always leave happy. We would even have delivered it to their shuttle if they had asked us." He went on conspiratorially "you have no idea what some customers ask for, these days. Used to be, they would come in, find something they'd like, buy it and leave the store. But now they want to have it delivered to their hotel, and that's in the best case. Or they ask us to have it shipped to their home planet. Sometimes shipping alone is more expensive than what they bought!"

Archer smiled at the trader in return, though he felt none of it. He was thinking furiously. They now knew that T'Pol and Reed had come by, that they had purchased the materials, and that, possibly, they had taken possession of the merchandise before they left. It seemed the interview with the trader was coming to an end. Still, there was something about the man and his manners that just didn't sit well with him.

It finally clicked. The trader had referred to their shuttle. Archer knew that neither Reed nor T'Pol were the type to give more information than strictly necessary to conduct a transaction, and how they came to the planet or where they lodged was not germane to closing the deal. Especially when considering the merchandise in question fit in a small-size safe. If the trader knew they were in a shuttle, it meant he had them followed.

He had to keep him talking. Archer had met plenty of traders of Ewri's ilk. If he was right, any possibility of profit would render Seel Ewri even more talkative, and careless.

"How much merchandise do you have left" he asked the trader. Archer could not have found a better way to ingratiate himself to Seel Ewri.

"Actually," glowed the merchant, "I have still as much left as I sold your friends. You are very lucky. I usually don't have that kind of amount on hand, but we had two freighters anchor here back to back."

"Two freighters, eh?" Archer said, mostly to keep Ewri going.

The trader shrugged, which sent his trump-like nose swaying from side to side. "Thanat III is a busy outpost, Sir".

"Captain," corrected Archer.

"Sir Captain." Archer decided to let it go.

"We have ships coming in every hour. We usually don't get ships with that kind of merchandise very often, but there are always surprises," Seel Ewri went on. "How much were you looking to buy?"

"I'll take another five kilos, same price."

The merchant positively beamed. Archer could certainly understand why. Two transactions like this in less than a month would put Ewri in the lap of luxury.

"Well, if I give it to you for the same price, I won't have any inventory left." Ewri started.

"And if we pay you cash, we won't have any money left," Archer replied.

Ewri reacted exactly as he expected, pretty near salivating at the thought of how the transaction would escape the books.

"Just because the nice Human and Vulcan couple were your friends, I'll keep the price the same," he announced.

Trip flinched again. "Can we see the merchandise?" he interrupted.

"Of course, of course," the trader was all smile. He shuffled around his counter to lock the door behind the MACOs, then turned to the team, "This way gentlemen," and led them behind the counter to a door in the back. The men found themselves in a large office crammed with desks and shelves along the wall. Another door with a sign that seemed to blink 'Exit' made it clear this was the back-office at the core of Ewri's trading operations. Archer motioned the MACOs to guard the outside door and refocused his attention on Ewri.

With great effort, the trader was pulling what looked like a small fireproof safe from under a desk. Trip helped him lift it up and deposit it on top of the nearest desk. He made a face at Archer – duratinium was not light. It was a good thing they had sent T'Pol. Well, in retrospect perhaps it was not a good thing, but if thing had worked out... Ewri entered a combination in the locking mechanism and the top of the safe sprung open, revealing row after row of neatly wrapped hexagonal rods, each in its own sleeve of brownish paper.

"We need to inspect the contents," Archer told Ewri. The merchant nodded. Only a rank amateur would buy a safe-full of merchandise without checking that the layers underneath contained the same merchandise as the layers above.

And only an amateur trader would let others reach into the safe themselves at the outset. He handed Archer one of the rods and a scanner, so that he could verify that this was duratinium indeed. Trip whisked out his own scanner and Ewri nodded in approval.

Once they had assured themselves that the merchandise was indeed the sought-after mineral and handed the rod back, Ewri pulled out the first layer from the safe and let the two officers look at the next one.

Archer stopped him before he could reach in the box to provide the next sample. "If you don't mind, we'd like to choose the next rod ourselves." Ewri nodded again, satisfied that these were professionals. He hated dealing with amateurs, they were just too easy to cheat and one derived little pleasure from pulling the wool over their eyes. Professionals were another story, and he dealt with them fairly. The fairness in his dealings increased with the expertise of the buyer.

He saw that the row below bore some decoration, probably a pattern in the paper, an elegant line of shapes reminiscent of musical notes. "The miners hate wasting anything," he commented with a smile at the officers, "they always re-use the paper sleeves." He had made the fib up on the spot, because buyers bought the story as much as the merchandise.

Archer's smile froze. Trip slowly turned beet red. Archer turned to the MACO's so that Ewri could not see him, hitting his fist in the flat of his hand, then turned back to the trader, still smiling. Ewri beamed back at him.

The trader's smile suddenly disappeared as Archer and Trip leaned over and picked him up by the throat, yanking him over the desk.

"Thieves, thieves" the merchant tried yelling, found that his voice was being squeezed out of his throat.

Archer's eyes were hard as stone. "Actually, you are the thief. These are the same rods you sold to my officers. So now you are going to tell me exactly what you did and how we can find them."

Seel Ewri looked sideways and Archer knew he was going to try and weasel his way out. He motioned with his chin to the MACOs. "Come here and hold him."

The MACOs made to come over but before they could take the first step Trip grabbed the merchant by the throat and started viciously hitting him with his fist, again and again and again. Archer looked in shock at his chief engineer for a couple of seconds, then jumped on his back to pull him away from his alien punching bag. The MACOs came over to help and it took the three of them to bring Trip under control. The merchant was bleeding from his ear, nose and mouth, and his face was already swelling up.

Archer made a point of stepping between him and Trip as if to prevent any further carnage. Shocked as he was at Trip's behavior, he recognized a golden opportunity when he saw one. He turned to the merchant "You are going to tell me everything, or I'm going to lock you in here with the Commander and post MACOs at the doors so nobody can come in or get out. Got it?"

The merchant sniveled, this time not for show. And he started talking.

xxx

DAY TEN – morning

T'Pol was starting to light the fire when she heard a very distant hum. She scanned the sky intently until a black dot appeared high up in the atmosphere. It was a shuttle, too far away to be anything but a point in the sky. She knew instantly that the Klingons had returned, intent on reclaiming the fugitives so that they could turn and sell them to the Orions, for a very good price.

She started up towards the shelter as quickly as she could with the help of the crutch. Even with the adrenaline coursing through her she was not be able to run. She stopped after a few yards, realizing her gait was too labored and she would not get to the shelter before the shuttle landed, which meant they would see her when she crossed the forest line.

She looked around, scanning for other means of escape. Trying to round the mountain through the forest meant she would soon be caught. She was not moving fast enough or smoothly enough to control her speed. Being caught meant going back to the cell aboard the Klingon ship and the thought of further beatings filled her with an anger and apprehension that she didn't have the control to suppress, her mental systems already taxed between blocking the pain and resisting the pull of the organism.

Her only option was to go down, towards whatever it was that was calling her mind insistently, louder and louder as time went by, invading her thoughts and drowning other connections. She had told Lieutenant Reed before he left that she would be able to resist until he came back. If everything went well she would be able to explain that she had gone deeper down in the forest out of a need for self-preservation and not because she had been overcome.

If everything went well.

She could hear in the distance the change in the bass tones of the engine as the shuttle came nearer the landing space. She was taking the slope as fast as she could, half-running, using the crutch as a bouncing pole to propel her forward, heedless of the pain in her side as the rapid breathing re-awakened the broken rib.

She had gone through a clearing, then another, and was gulping for breath, the act of moving made much more strenuous by the need to use the crutch. She rushed through the underbrush marking the line between two clearings when she heard the shuttle land in the distance. She turned to glance uphill towards the shuttle, taking her attention away from the crutch and it rolled off the exposed root of a tree.

The crutch broke with a resounding split and she landed hard on her injured leg. A white nova of pain shot through her while her leg muscles cramped uncontrollably. She bit hard on the inside of her mouth to keep from screaming. She felt nauseous and light headed as she fought the grey mist that was creeping up on the edges of her consciousness. She still needed to get away. She started crawling on her belly, her useless leg dragging, the muscles still shivering in uncontrollable cramps, when suddenly tendrils shot from the roots of the tree her crutch had nicked, quickly extending until they covered her from all sides, forming an exoskeleton of live wood. She couldn't scream for help, the Klingons would be the only ones to hear her. Held helpless inside the wooden cage, she could only wait until they came. She heard the Klingons yell in victory, not so far away. It seemed they had found the fire pit. Now they knew the officers were alive. She heard the grunting of the targs up the slope as they rushed down, their masters at their heels.

All of a sudden the ground seemed to move and she found herself being slowly lifted in the air, still tightly held within the wooden cage. Some of the same tendrils imprisoning her had kept extending until they circled the lower branches of the tree and were now pulling her up. She kept rising until she was level with the branches, safely hidden from view by the leaves that seemed to have multiplied all over the carapace of sticks that kept her in its grip. She could glimpse the ground at the base of the tree. She saw one of the targs approach then sneeze explosively and give the tree a wide berth, followed by its pack.

The half-dozen Klingons on their heels looked around for any signs of the fugitives then urged the targs on down to the next clearing. She could not understand what was said, her universal translator was with Lieutenant Reed. A relative silence fell over the forest as the sounds of the parties receded down slope. T'Pol tested the carapace of branches that were enveloping her, found that they would not yield. She could not move. Her leg was lancing but she couldn't touch it. She could do nothing but wait.

The indistinct presence that had been calling to her turned into a voice in her head, whispering "Mine, it's mine."

xxx

DAY TEN – Beta Shift

“Captain Archer to Enterprise."

"This is Enterprise, Captain."

"Hoshi, please let Phlox know we have the minerals and we're bringing them on board. Have him prepare a storage stasis unit. "

"Aye Captain." Hoshi relayed the message to Phlox, then sat down in her chair. She looked over at Travis. He looked as nonplussed as she was "When does Doctor Phlox ever take care of minerals?" he said. Hoshi nodded "That's what I thought to. There must be some other reason …"

xx

Phlox was waiting for them in the transport. The MACOs stepped off the dais and put the safe down. Archer and Trip followed, unsmiling.

"What happened?" Phlox asked, looking from one to the other.

Archer turned to him. "It turns out our trader has a side business where his Klingons accomplices rob his buyers and bring the merchandise back to him. He keeps turning it over until the robbery fails for some reason, then procures more materials and starts over."

"How did you find out?" Phlox was looking at the safe at his feet. Archer gave a small laugh, got down on one knee and opened the box. Phlox looked nonplussed at the rows of neatly wrapped duratinium. Then Archer leaned over and lifted the top drawer, revealing the next layer of neatly wrapped cylinders. On every other one or so were markings vaguely reminiscent of music symbols. Vulcan! The realization almost dealt Phlox a physical blow.

Archer was commenting "Trip and I have seen the word 'Starfleet' in Vulcan so many times that we probably would be able to write it ourselves." Hoshi, who had been manning the transporter, had walked where they were. Archer turned to her "Lieutenant, I can't read the rest. What does it say?" She leaned over and started reading "Duratinium, Thanat III, property of Starfleet".

Archer turned to Phlox. "Get this put in stasis. We're going to the bridge." He seemed to want to say something more, stopped himself, gave a meaningful look at Phlox that said they needed to speak later.

"And Lieutenant Reed and Commander T'Pol?" Phlox called after him.

"We have the coordinates of the places where the Klingons conduct business" Archer answered as they walked away, leaving Phlox and the MACOs by the transporter pad.

One of the MACOs blew his cheeks out, releasing his breath. "We really thought Commander Tucker was going to kill the trader" he commented.

Phlox turned to him "Really? Commander Tucker?" As he accompanied the MACOs to the storage room, Phlox was deep in thought.

xx

Archer sat in the command chair, staring at the viewscreen. Now that they knew where the Klingons might be found, it would be a cat and mouse game until they eventually caught up with them. The Klingons had already gone back to Thanat III to unload the rare minerals. Unless they had pirated another ship in the meantime, they still had everything else they stole from the shuttlepod, plus two officers. The logical next step would be to go to the Orion processing station and unload their captives. That's where the money was. What they stole from the shuttlepod was chump change in comparison.

"Ensign Mayweather, lay in in a route from here to Uu'z'tik and let me know if it comes close to any of the coordinates I gave you. Otherwise proceed with all speed."

Now all he had to do was hope that the Klingons were on their way to Uu'z'tik. They had a day on Enterprise, but they certainly were not a Warp Five vessel. With luck, Enterprise would get to the station close on their heels. Close enough that they wouldn't end up having to chase for their officers all over the quadrant. Or worse, several quadrants.

xxx

DAY TEN – night

‘ _Next time, I won't play the hero_ ’, Malcolm thought bitterly, hunching his back against the cold wind and shivering. He certainly had not been cold on the way up, the exertion was enough to keep him warm and toasty all the way to the top. Which he had reached with about two hours of sunlight left. He had deposited the two UT chips in a nook of a rock, sheltered from wind and rain but exposed enough that the Enterprise sensors had a chance to pick up on the weak signal. And then he had turned around and proceeded back down, after a quick look around at the view.

The forest extended on all sides, like a giant amoeba, except for the few sparse hilltops that poked through here and there. The way down had been arduous, and he had only been a third from the top when he had to stop and seek shelter. Except that there was no shelter. He was hunched down between two boulders, trying as he could to maintain body warmth and protect himself from the chill. At least, there were no predators. And his growing beard afforded him a small measure of protection.

All he now had to do was linger around until dawn. The worst hour would be the one immediately preceding dawn, when the night had lasted the longest and the planet had become the coldest. To keep himself occupied his mind went over their journey from the Enterprise.

xx

It all had gone so smoothly the first two days had been stultifyingly tedious. Even after they reached Thanat III.

He should have known that was a bad sign. Never let your guard down, no matter what.

But then, neither of them had let their guard down.

They both were experienced operatives who knew exactly what they were doing. Even the encounter with the trader had gone smoothly, his small dusty front shop hiding the real business being done out of the back. Negotiations had been protracted but not overly so, both sides wanted to strike a bargain. The trader, what was his name, Youri or something like that, knew his stuff. He had tried to sell them somewhat of a bill of goods, had been stopped in place by a glare from T'Pol, and had turned into a true professional.

Still Reed hadn't liked him, his sixth sense on high alert. But the trader had done nothing untoward and they left on a handshake and an agreement to come and pick up the duratinium the next day. It was on their way back to the shuttle for the night that Reed had chanced upon the small eatery and its promise of roast beef.

It had taken a fair amount of convincing to get T'Pol to stop and eat, she was more comfortable going straight to the shuttle and didn't like to stray from the assigned goal while on duty. He had pointed that there was no logic in eating the travel rations she despised because they all contained meat when she could eat a proper vegetarian meal, even if the vegetables were certain to be overcooked into mushy blandness. That had won her over.

Their trip back to the shuttle also had gone without a hitch. And yet, every so often he had found himself turning suddenly to catch shadows that turned out to be nothing else than leaves aflutter on a tree or a transport skidding down the street. Their departure from Thanat III had been just as uneventful, T'Pol taking care to mark the top layer of the minerals then switch it for the second one, so that someone else opening the safe would only see neatly arranged and wrapped rows that had never even been handled and not realize there was an ownership mark.

What had happened didn't make sense. He kept replaying the trip in his mind, unwilling to believe their luck could have been so poor or the Klingons' luck so good that they somehow alighted on their shuttle right when they had a fortune in minerals on board. They must have been followed while they were on the planet. By someone who saw them enter the trader's shop and knew they went in to buy something other than curios.

But then it didn't make sense, how would they know what they bought or that they were leaving the next day, or when. An overnight trace? Unlikely. Not without being spotted. Unless someone in the trader's office told them. Perhaps a janitor who checked the order padds at night. Perhaps one of the aides, though they had not seen any aide either time they went in there. The trader himself? He discarded the thought, the man would not be in business long if that was the case.

And yet. That sixth sense that the trader was up to no good would not be denied. The thought that they could have been the victims of a coordinated attack was making him angrier and angrier. Angry enough that he could have single-handedly fought their ship and defeated the Klingons.

But no matter how often he replayed the movie in his head, the end result was always the same. There was nothing more he could have done.

The shuttlepod was overmatched and underarmed from the start, even an unbelievable stroke of luck would not have kept them from being boarded. He was overmatched and underarmed for any kind of physical fight with the Klingons. He wished he had reacted like T'Pol and given them as good as he got, at least for a while, but she had the tranquil assurance of Vulcan's physical superiority to rely on and propel her into a fight, because of the outside chance that the odds would turn in her favor. But that outside chance was nil for a mid-size human and for once had followed the logical path of logic and stayed away from self-defeating heroics.

The chivalric part of him wished he had not, that he would have made a claim to his own brand of human stupidity, Archer-like. But T'Pol was right, in the end they had both escaped because he had refrained from bucking the odds. Still, it didn't sit well with him. It went against his deeply ingrained sense that it was his duty as Chief Security Officer to protect the crew in any and all manners.

Instead, he, the Chief Security Officer had been a liability. As much as he hated the thought, it could be that T'Pol had attacked the Klingons as a way to get them to focus on her and not hurt her weaker human companion. He felt guilty that she had been hurt because of him.

When they had had to take the UT chips out of where they were embedded in their uniforms, his was in his collar, and it was short work for him to unzip his uniform enough so that T'Pol could access the collar and fish the chip out. Hers was on the back of her collar and in order to enable Malcolm to access it she had to demagnetize the closing side of her uniform. The fabric had very naturally folded onto itself, allowing Malcolm a glimpse of her grey undershirt and the angry looking welts and bruises that seemed to cover every inch he could see. He had carefully refrained from any exclamation.

Preventing the feelings of self-recrimination had been harder, but fortunately he had been distracted by the need to gather wood to keep the fire going for the next two days, hunt enough lemmings for the duration and overall do everything he could so that T'Pol didn't have to do much of anything.

Now that he was alone, above the weirdly telepathic forest organism and far from her, he could at last dwell on some matters without fear that his thoughts would be transmitted to her. And it distracted him from the shivering cold, which was a side bonus.

It was obvious T'Pol was physically not well and now that organism was connected to her and trying to reel her in. What would happen if it prevailed and turned out to be some predatory lifeform? She would not be able to fight it. He needed to prevent the lifeform or whatever it was from ensnaring her further. He didn't see many ways to do that yet but then he had the whole night to think about it.

Reed sighed. What bothered him was not what it may be necessary for him to do. What bothered him was the fact he might fail and then he could not see himself facing his best friend ever again if that happened.

xxx

DAY ELEVEN – early morning

Dawn found Malcolm stiff with cold and shivering, but still alive. One minute he was colder than he ever thought he could be, and the next, before even dawn let in the first rays of the dual suns, he could feel their warmth blanketing him. Once the suns had broken through and thawed his joints and feet, he picked up on the downward trail again.

With the rising suns, he was better able to get a sense of the forest, if that was a forest, that was spreading over the surface features of the planet, at least as far as he could see, though if he squinted hard enough he could distinguish a sand-colored edge in the far horizon. There was a limit to the forest. In some ways that made him feel better, though he wasn't sure if it should.

As he climbed down from the outcrop, leaning into the slope and careful to balance his steps, he kept getting a better view of the trees undulating down the flanks of the mountain to a point he could not see. A couple of hours more of downward climb brought him where he could start distinguishing the mosaic of clearings that made the forest.

The overall impact was that of... scales. Malcolm stopped, a sudden chill going over him. If the forest was some kind of pelt, then it was not vegetal. He was looking straight down the mountain, to the point where the surrounding hills converged, and he still couldn't see anything. He stopped his downward march, sat on a boulder for a second view. He had to figure out where the slopes ended. Something told him the heart of the forest organism was there.

And then he could see it, a luminous green lake shaped like a triangle. Reassured, he got up, turned to go down again, looking back to keep the lake in sight as a guide. Except there was no lake and no end point to the slopes, just black emptiness. Reed froze. Sat down again. His whole being was fighting what his mind was slowly starting to realize. But there it came again, the glow of the green lake, then the blackness of the void, then the green lake

… except it was not a lake, was it.

It was more like a… mouth… opening onto… a gullet.

This thing was alive, and it was lying in wait!

Malcolm scrambled down the hill, going as fast as he could, clambering over boulders, gravel rolling from under his feet. He needed to get to T'Pol right away.

xxx

DAY ELEVEN – Alpha Shift

"Phlox to Commander Tucker"

Trip slammed on the intercom. It was really early in the morning for Phlox to call him, and he had just woken up. He was already irritated and the Doctor's meddling was not helping. "Tucker here, what do you want?" He took a deep breath, shaking his head. He guessed he wouldn't have to let Phlox know that he still woke up angry. The anger was muted but incessant, making him irritable as soon as he opened his yes.

There was a pause on the other end, but Phlox seemed to take it in stride. "Good morning to you too, Commander. Remember the tests we took a couple of days ago? I have the results, if you wouldn't mind stopping by Sickbay before your shift." Trip rolled his eyes. Of course, the old Denobulan doctor had to bug him about medical tests. He had worked hard at avoiding Sickbay since his last encounter with the doctor, and he did know it would eventually come to a head. And since Phlox could, and would, pull rank… well, there was really nothing he could do, except show that he wasn't liking it.

"Ah, yes, the tests." Trip put as much of a dismissive tone as he could into the words.

Phlox's skin was thicker than that and he wasn't about to take any attitude from one of his patients. "The tests are ready for you, Commander, and I suggest you come over immediately."

Phlox flicked the intercom shut, then waited. He had to say, the commander's behavior was highly unusual. If he were a Vulcan… but no, Commander Tucker was not a Vulcan. Phlox shook his head and waited.

The subject of his growing concern and budding annoyance soon walked into Sickbay. Phlox motioned him to a biobed, which would enable him to monitor the engineer's vitals while they were talking.

"Commander," he started, "I have to admit that I am a little perplexed by your test results. Before we review the numbers, I wanted to ask about the state of your relationship with Commander T'Pol."

"What relationship?" Trip automatically responded. The knee-jerk response was something he had carefully cultivated, in case the question ever came up with Starfleet. T'Pol had her own way of deflecting questions while seeming to provide ample and detailed answers.

Phlox shook his head, crossed his arms, and stared at the engineer, head cocked to one side. "Must I remind you, Commander, that everything you tell me here is protected by doctor/patient confidence?" He wasn't going to add that as far as Phlox was concerned their relationship was an open secret and the only surprising fact in there was that Starfleet hadn't caught on yet.

One didn't even have to have a degree in psychiatry, though of course that would help. If Vulcans were not subject to depression because they suppressed their feelings, then he had seen a very good impersonation of one seriously depressed Vulcan when Trip left for Columbia. Who seemed a lot less depressed about three days after Trip came back to Enterprise. Which was about the exact same time when the engineer turned from the angry and sarcastic young dolt who had wreaked havoc on the engineers of Columbia into the young officer full of promise and loved by his crew that he used to be.

No need to scan their pheromones. The truth was obvious to everyone who had a keen sense of observation. Which didn't include Archer who only knew because the Commanders had to tell him in connection with some mission.

Though his impression was that, other than some outliers like Hoshi who could sniff out gossip even before it existed and Malcolm who was Trip's best friend, the rest of the crew ignored the going-ons, being generally of the 'live and let live' persuasion and having plenty enough on their hands just staying alive mission after mission.

Trip smiled sheepishly "Okay, so what about our relationship."

Phlox sighed. "That is what I asked for, Mr. Tucker, the state of your relationship. How is your relationship going? Any clouds on the horizon, hmm?"

Trip was nonplussed. "Well, it's going fine. I'm not sure I understand what you mean, clouds? Did T'Pol say anything?!"

"No, no, no, no" Phlox hurried to reassure him. "Not at all. It's just… your endocrine readings are not making sense. If you were Vulcan, perhaps, but you're not."

The two men were looking at each other, one standing and one seated, both deep in thought. Then Trip looked up "Could it be the bond thing?"

"It could be. Can you tell me more about 'the bond thing'?"

Phlox would have liked to experience what it was like at least once, so that he had a better idea, instead of having to rely on uncommunicative Vulcans and happy-go-lucky Human engineers. That it was a key part of Vulcan society and culture, there was no doubt about. But what did it feel like to have a bond? How would his relationships with his three wives be enhanced or changed if they had a bond? Could he even have three wives then? Since a bond was not part of his near or distant future, he had to try and figure out what it was like through Trip.

"Well, you know, it's a little like being married." Phlox snorted. A little like being married was equivalent in his eyes to being a little bit pregnant. But he was intrigued. "Can you find out where she is?"

Trip shook his head, the Captain had already asked the same thing. "No, I can't. I can just sense her." Trip paused, then added "It would be easier for her being telepathic and all to find out where I was."

"Any changes in how you 'sense' her?"

Trip sounded positively relieved "Well, that's the thing, doctor, since about three days after we found the shuttle, I have this weird feeling. Like the bond is there, but not the way it should be. Like it's muted. I can't explain it," the engineer was reflexively flexing and rubbing his hands, this was obviously a source of some emotional pain.

"Or like it's being interfered with?" Phlox hazarded.

Trip's head whipped up "Yes, exactly, like something's interfering".

 _Or someone_ , thought Phlox. He looked back at the engineer "And you neglected to tell me this somewhat critical piece of information?"

"It's not like you asked." Trip retorted.

Phlox sighed, passed a hand over his brow. Kids, they were all kids. How Humans had managed to stumble into space was still an astonishment for him. He went back to his scanner and the results that were showing. Now it made a little bit more sense, though not completely. Unless…

"Do you think that perhaps Lieutenant Reed and Commander T'Pol are having a relationship?"

"No, of course not!" Trip jerked as if he had been bit by a cobra. He didn't see the alarms silently blinking on the overhead monitors, but Phlox did. _Hmm, so that's what it was about_. It confirmed a developing hypothesis of the doctor's. But first, he needed to do some additional research.

"Have you considered that perhaps the only relationship they're engaged in is one of joint survival?" Phlox matter-of-factly asked the engineer. "Or that perhaps T'Pol entered into another symbiotic relationship in order to increase their chances of survival?" He paused, looked at Trip "Lieutenant Reed's sense of honor may seem somewhat archaic but it does inform the decisions he makes. And Vulcans have their own strict behavior guidelines. No, Commander, I firmly do not believe Lieutenant Reed and Commander T'Pol are engaged in any relationship other than professional."

Phlox paused again "Which does not mean that there is no validity to your feeling that the bond is being interfered with or your reaction to it. That's something we need to focus on."

"My reaction to it?" Trip looked up at the doctor.

"Well, Commander, I think I may know what may be going on, but first I have do so some research." Phlox said. It wasn't like the Vulcans were loose-lipped about their very idiosyncratic approach to relationships, but he had access to some sources that would talk to him, under the code of the strictest silence, of course. "In the meantime, I am going to prescribe 10 units of cortradycenitine twice a day, in the morning and at night. You'll find that it helps modulate things."

"Thanks, Doctor" Trip got off the biobed, turned to leave.

"Oh, and" Phlox caught him before he crossed the door "I wouldn't mention your thoughts to the commander. Or to Lieutenant Reed. I’m not sure they would look at them too kindly."

As he left Sickbay, Trip couldn't help reflecting that he had just been given something new to worry about.

xxx

DAY ELEVEN – morning

The noise of the shuttle coming back roused T'Pol from the light healing trance she had entered. She was still captive of the exoskeleton of wood, still strapped tight to one the tree limbs.

The ever-presence of the entity in her mind was starting to affect her physically now that Lieutenant Reed was not around to provide a counter-balance to the psionic pull. It gave her a headache bad enough to make her feel slightly nauseous, not a bad thing considering no food had been offered for consumption. Whatever the organism was, its leaning on her to join him was closer to bullying than to a heartfelt entreaty. This was by far too one-sided to be called a telepathic exchange. Its presence was overbearing, filling her mind and leaving little room for independent thought. Or other connections. Her bond to Trip felt muted, as if it was filtered through something thick and gooey. She didn't have the energy to try and reach out to him, her entire being was focused on relieving the pressure from the alien entity.

While it was illogical to wish for things one couldn't attain, she would not have minded walking into Sickbay about right now and getting something for the headache. Dr. Phlox had early on associated her headaches with the constant barrage of undisciplined feelings that emanated from her crewmates, even when they were sleeping, and always kept a supply of novopraline on hand. It was a small adjustment to make for the stimulation brought by these new beings discovering the universe. As she had told Captain Archer on her second meeting, space was vast. And seeing this new race embrace the immensity of space with the enthusiasm of their short-lived species had been rewarding. Of course, there was also the small matter of having taken a Human as a bondmate, which meant that, like it or not, novopraline injections were going to be part of her ongoing pharmacopeia. Altogether a small price to pay.

The subject of payments brought her back to the forest or the organism that looked like a forest. Logically, the satisfaction of Lieutenant Reed's wishes, and indirectly hers, would require the exchange of something of value. The organism would not be providing help without some return for to do otherwise would mean it was expanding energy without replenishment, which was illogical for it would not survive long if the expenditure of energy only went one way.

Which meant that the organism was expecting something of value in return. Valuable enough that it made it worthwhile for the organism to save her from the Klingons.

She could have easily calculated the probability that she was that thing of value, triangulating for the fact she was effectively a prisoner of the forest, allied to the constant reminder in her mind of "it's mine", but she convinced herself it would be illogical to favor that one possibility over others yet undefined.

The logical conclusion was that she needed to get out of the cage and of the forest, in spite of the building pressure that was entreating her, no, commandeering her to keep going, down the slope, to a place where she was needed and awaited. She also realized that so long as she was kept in a wooden cage she would be unable to give in to these entreaties, unless some kind of peristaltic function was served by the forest. Another possibility that she would much prefer not to be an actuality.

Perhaps she should have called to the Klingons when they had come back by the clearing the day before. The known inconvenience of temporary physical harm and being sold into slavery might have been a better outcome than the uncertain fate that was awaiting her. But their return had come too fast, the Klingons scrambling up the slope as if pursued by some ghastly force, grunting as they went by. It had struck her that she hadn't heard the hissing and snarling of the targs that had accompanied them, assumed at the time that the dogs must have come back a different way, with their handler. Now she was not so sure anymore.

Did the Klingons rush back because something happened to the targs? It would explain the tense silence, the absence of any kind of communication between them. Not that she could have understood what they would have said. She had heard the shuttle take off. And then nothing. After a few more hours she had decided to enter a light healing trance and use the forced rest to accelerate the healing process. Though she feared the damage to her leg would require some type of medical intervention.

Now the Klingons were back.

She doubted they had come back for the missing targs. Targs were used indifferently as hounds or as prime roast, and no Klingon worth its salt would have expanded any resources on locating errant animals. If they didn't come back for the targs, perhaps they had come back to settle accounts with the forest organism. It was a definite possibility.

The other possibility was that they knew she was there and they had come back for her.

The millions of units they could earn from selling her as a slave could overcome many anxieties, missing targs or not. Given the planet dampening effect, she didn't know how they could have found her. Perhaps they just came to check the area where the leader of the pack of targs had sneezed. She didn't know enough about targs but perhaps that had been enough out of character to make the Klingons suspicious.

She craned her neck, trying to see through the branches and leaves of her cage. She couldn't see the shuttle, too high and away on the slope. But the Klingons were cutting through the brook, lower than they had before, and she caught a glimpse of the large and heavy-looking drum that was being carried between two of them. The others seemed to be armed with small bazookas.

The Klingons crossed the stream and set up the heavy drum, activated a button on the side. The resulting sonic wave hit her like a wall, taking her breath away. The air around her became thick, while waves of sound reverberated inside her skull, making her clench her teeth against the pain. The organism's presence in her mind was howling in agony and anger. Then the pain stopped and everything slowly returned to normal.

Hoops and yells came from the Klingons and she knew they had detected her. The large drum must have been a powerful sonic sensor. Soon, six Klingons came into the clearing, pointing up to where she was held in a wood cage, talking loudly and excitedly. Three of them hauled the bazookas off their shoulder and into firing position. The leader gave a short bark and a wall of fire erupted from the weapons, directed at the tree where she was.

Mayhem erupted.

She felt the tree implode on itself, slowly folding into the fire. As it did so, the wooden jaws that were securely holding her in place released their grip, the tendrils of wood cocooning her softened, and she was brought down as gently as she had been brought up. But the pressing call in her mind turned into a howl of fury that lashed out indiscriminately at everything around it.

She screamed at the pain, closed her eyes to try and stop the battery, hearing her scream echoed in others. The pain left as quickly as it came. T'Pol found herself sitting on the ground, free from the wooden exoskeleton that had kept her dangling high in the tree. She got up unsteadily, using the charred trunk to bring herself up to her feet, and turned to where the Klingons were.

Only to be struck by a scene of gory horror. Stiff tendrils had shot out from the dying tree and the others around the clearing, thick and taut as bamboo shoots, so quickly that five of the Klingons had been impaled right where they stood, the tendrils of woods coming out through their neck, their shoulder or their mouth. They were held upright in place as if they had been butterflies pinned to a matt, their mouths open in silent screams of agony. The scene was made even more grotesque by the purple blood bathing it, seeping into the ground. The sixth Klingon was looking in shock at his colleagues. He looked at her in abject terror and took off running up the slope as fast as he could.

T'Pol took a step back from the nightmarish spectacle and promptly fell because of her leg. She hoisted herself up again taking care to rely on her left side. The sound of a departing shuttle permeated the forest.

The voice in T'Pol's mind went up an octave into an unremitting beseeching imperative, drowning anything else. Mentally blind and deaf, all she knew was that she needed to go down to where 'it' was. There was no room for anything else. Using the trees as support, she started hobbling down the slope.

xxx

DAY ELEVEN – noon

It was close to midday when Malcolm finally rounded the last boulders, skidding around them in his haste to get to the shelter. But the shelter was empty. He ran straight down to the firepit. The ashes were obviously cold, no fire had been made in it for at least a full day. He looked around, but there was no sign of T'Pol. He would have panicked except for the fact he expected her to walk out of the forest at any time, telepathically alerted to his return. He waited a couple of minutes in hopeful expectation. Then he proceeded to make a fire, in case she could smell the smoke. But still she didn't show up.

Having long exhausted the miniature water pouches he had taken with him, Malcolm walked over to the stream and laid down on its bank, drinking deeply. It was when he got back up that he saw it, and for the second time of the day his blood ran cold.

Right next to the stream, imprinted in the ground still humid from them filling the tiny organic pouches, the unmistakable print of a Klingon boot. Malcolm quickly looked over to the landing space, but there was no shuttle there.

The Klingons had come back.

His heart started racing in his chest. Did they find T'Pol? Was she on her way to the Orion processing station already? He looked all around like a drowning man in search of a buoy, looking for a sign, a clue, anything that would tell him whether she was still on the planet. While his first instinct was to rush to the landing pad as the last place she may have been, he had enough training to know this would be an unproductive waste of time. If that was what happened she would no longer be there, period.

He only had two directions to search, either to the side, around the mountain, or downward, towards the green lake. Since the danger lied where the lake was, that was where he needed to go. If he didn't find her there, he would have plenty of time to explore other options. He started as swiftly as he could down the slope, in a straight line, half-running when he could do so without tumbling head over heels downhill. He had gone a short distance when his eye caught a well-known shape on the ground. He would have recognized the crutch anywhere. He picked it up, noting a good part of its length had sheared off. He threw it aside and kept going.

And stopped dead in his tracks. In front of him was the nightmarish scene of five impaled Klingons. After the first shocked recoil, he scanned the five contorted bodies more carefully, but nowhere could he see the whiteness of a jumpsuit. A small part of him sighed in relief. He noted the tendrils nailing the Klingons in place, saw how they erupted from the tree roots. The forest organism had killed them. He examined the charred remains of the trees on his left side and the group of dead Klingons, the bazookas scattered at their feet, and the overturned drum baffle at the edge of the clearing, his detective mind filling in the blanks.

He didn't think the Klingons acted in self-defense. They must have been the aggressors. Did the forest organism kill them in reflexive reaction to the attack or was there malice involved? And where was T'Pol? Did it kill her too? Or were there more than five Klingons and the others took her away? Or did she escape? If she didn't have a crutch, she would be walking slowly. If she was walking slowly, he should be able to catch up with her. The blood was fresh on the ground, the killing hadn't happened too long ago.

That spurred him on, stepping gingerly in a straight line between the charred trees and the dead Klingons until he was past the clearing, and then he took off again, going even faster.

xxx

DAY ELEVEN – Beta Shift

"Hoshi to Dr. Phlox"

"Yes, Hoshi" Phlox hit the intercom on his desk. "I have a communication for you from Dr. Yuris, marked private."

"Send it through, Ensign, thank you." Phlox shut off the intercom and waited. He had had the greatest respect for Dr. Yuris since the doctor had provided the research on the Panaar Syndrome to T'Pol and he had privately rejoiced when Dr. Yuri had been reinstated, as head of the medical academy no less, after T'Pau had taken the reins on Vulcan. Once in a while he found himself wistfully hoping the other doctors who had been so quick to cast stones at T'Pol were now working as lab techs on some unknown and remote Vulcan outposts.

Phlox quickly scanned the written materials. It seemed Vulcans were so squeamish about relationships and bonds that even Dr. Yuris preferred to put things in writing than actually record them in a videopad. But what he read just confirmed his intuitive feeling. He pressed the intercom, thinking that after he talked to Trip he would need to alert the captain as well. Their shift had just recently ended.

xx

"What are you telling me?" Archer looked at Phlox, thinking perhaps he hadn't heard clearly.

The doctor sighed. "There is a reason why interfering with marital bonds is a capital crime on Vulcan. It is part of the social contract, otherwise their society would be rendered by violence. I guess that's some of what was going on in pre-Surak times."

"Can you reel it back?" Archer interrupted Phlox. He didn't care to hear the historical and societal reason for something when he didn't understand that something in the first place.

Phlox looked at him pensively. This was going to take a while. Patiently he went over what he had discussed with Commander Tucker, that the interference in the bond he shared with T'Pol triggered a rise in critical hormones that made him irritable and prone to anger and could very well lead to sudden and explosive violence. "So" Phlox ended, "as I told the Commander, anything could set off another attack like that on the trader." Archer had called Phlox in and related the savage beating that was so unlike Trip in its ferocity. "You have to be aware of the potential for violence at any time, especially against other males."

Archer looked at Phlox as if he had grown three heads. "What do you want me to do, have Trip work with women only?"

"That would be preferable, Captain", Phlox replied seriously, "though I realize it may not be possible."

Archer just shook his head in disbelief, he wasn't sure whether at the whole interference thing or at Phlox's answer.

xxx

DAY ELEVEN – afternoon

"T'Pol!" He had taken to calling her, hoping that perhaps she would answer, now that the Klingons were gone. But there was no reply and the lemmings didn't seem to care.

Still, Malcolm kept calling as he hurried downhill from clearing to clearing. He must have been walking for a couple of hours now, and was thinking there was no way she could have covered that much ground with a bum leg.

Just as he was about to stop and reconsider his approach, he glimpsed something white through the branches, down and to the left. She didn't react to his calling her name, nor the noise of his running footsteps. She didn't even turn to look at him, she was just stepping ahead, using the trees as a crutch and pulling herself forward. He ran to her until he was right behind her, almost touching her, and still she didn't turn around, mindlessly moving forward, always forward.

He grabbed her by the arm and whirled her around. Her pupils were dilated and she looked right through him to a horizon line well into the distance. He called her name several times, trying to rekindle an expression of recognition, anything that would let him know she was still there.

Finally, when he was just about to give up, she seemed to come to, as if she were awakening form a long sleep. She blinked several times and finally looked at him and not through him. "The Klingons" she said.

Malcolm nodded "I know. The Klingons came back. They're dead now, there's no need to worry. Do you remember what happened?"

She stared at him as if she had to do intense mental calculations in order to answer. She glanced away "The tree".

She was really out of it, thought Malcolm. "The tree killed them" he helped.

She looked at him "They are not trees."

He nodded again "There's some kind of living thing at the base of the mountain. If you keep going that way you'll quite literally be throwing yourself into its jaws."

She frowned, obviously making a great effort to speak. "A... a life form. The forest is the physical form. Much like a Cnidaria, very low level of conscious thought, instinct-driven, but a telepathic hunter." T'Pol closed her eyes, obviously exhausted from having strung so many words together. When she opened them again, her pupils were hugely dilated, seeming to take over her face. Wordlessly she turned away from Malcolm, obviously intent on going back downhill.

He couldn't let that happen. He didn't know what a Cnidaria was but he knew that a telepathic hunter couldn't be good news for her. "We have to go back up to the shelter!" and before she could resist or come up with an excuse, he pulled her arm over his shoulders and started dragging her up the slope.

Going uphill was a lot more difficult than going downhill, in part due her leg and in greater part due to their ongoing struggle as she kept fighting to find her way back downhill. Malcolm gritted his teeth and held on. He had had plenty of time to think how to prevent her from being reeled in by the organism while on the outcrop, but most of it involved some kind of physical violence and he was wont to add to the damage inflicted by the Klingons.

The incremental progress up the slope, as slow as it was, was still progress, even if it took twice, three times, four times as long as it should have. He kept a running commentary as they went, partly to distract himself and partly to try and keep her connected. As they steadily made their way up, her pupils came back to normal more often, which spurred him on. She would also stop fighting at those times and they were making more progress.

Still, the night started falling before they made it up to the clearing where the Klingons were pinned. Malcolm realized they wouldn't make it the rest of the way to the shelter in time. He stopped and led T'Pol to the nearest tree trunk, which she grabbed for balance. He looked at her. Her pupils were dilating and shrinking at semi-regular intervals.

"Do you need me to make a fire?" he asked.

"The temperature is not unpleasant" she replied, surprisingly coherently. Malcolm realized that the telepathic hunter was also messing with her physiology. There was no way the temperature was not unpleasant for a Vulcan. It was on the cold side even for him. He paused for a moment.

He had thought the encroaching darkness would prevent her from going anywhere on her own, had already figured how he was going to secure her to him for the night, but perhaps her dilated pupils... "Can you see?" he asked disinterestedly, even though he was very much interested in the answer.

She looked around, scanning the clearing and the trees lining it. "Not very clearly" was the answer. Malcolm mentally cussed and she looked at him curiously, as if trying to ascertain if she had indeed heard him say what she thought he had. That reminded him he needed to be careful with his thoughts. He walked to her right side, where her injured leg was, very consciously keeping his mind blank. He would have to act on instinct.

"We need to keep going," he told her. He had actually planned to stop for the night but getting away from the telepathic organism was now his main priority.

He was exhausted, from the climb up the outcrop, the rush down from it, the adrenaline jolt at realizing the organism was waiting for him down below, for he had no illusion that he would be spared once T'Pol had been done with, he was hungry and he was cold.

And none of that was going to be changing anytime soon. He looked over at T'Pol, thinking she looked the way he felt. The two of them were a sore-looking bunch, for sure. If they kept going like that, there wouldn't be much for the organism to feed on.

They had been going for another couple of hours, he hauling and pushing and keeping her on track, and actively suppressing any thought of how close her hand was for a Vulcan nerve pinch, when the shrieks started. Those shrieks that Malcolm had been wondering about, thinking initially they came from some nocturnal flying animal.

They resounded all around them in the forest, sometime high up in the trees, sometime low to the ground, and the same instinct that had told him to keep going now told him to stay put. He guided the two of them to the nearest clump of trees, making sure they were partially hidden, and they settled there, he holding T'Pol securely in front of him, as he had done that first night in the lean-to, but this time he had a death-grip on her lest she escape and start downhill again. She was no longer fighting to go back downhill and he had a feeling that was connected to the rising of the shrieking animals. If that was what those were.

xxx

DAY ELEVEN – Delta Shift

Archer was falling asleep on his chair, his head leaning forward in spite of himself until he would suddenly wake up and glare again at the screen, bleary-eyed. Hoshi was hunched over her station and Archer wondered if perhaps she had fallen asleep. None of the bridge crew needed to be at their post, but none of them had agreed to leave when their relief came by. He himself was bemoaning the improvements made to the captain's chair, which were making it so difficult not to fall asleep. It was Reed's replacement that woke them all up.

"Captain, there's a ship 10,000 miles away" Ensign Kivich announced.

All of a sudden, everybody was alert. Archer leaned forward "What –

"Klingon, sir!" the ensign shouted so loud Archer almost jumped out of his chair.

"Ensign Mayweather, lay in a course to intercept. Ensign Kivich, get the weapons on line. Trip –

"—don't worry, Captain, engines will do anything you want them to."

The ship that showed up on the viewscreen was a fair-size, squat workhorse of a ship, and no match for a starship. Archer knew the Klingons would fight rather than talk. "All shields at maximum. Ensign Kivich, take their engines out. Travis, do not let them get away."

Enterprise dove on the Klingon transport like a hawk out of the sky. The Klingon ship tried to respond as it could, but was soon overpowered, listing to one side. Archer reflected that it was a good turn of events that the Klingons knew the fate they had so often inflicted on others.

"Any Vulcan or Human biosign on board?" he asked

"Negative, Captain" Trip answered from his console, where he had taken over the science station. The science ensigns were done with their shifts.

"Hail the ship" Archer told Hoshi.

"They're responding, Captain."

"On the screen." Archer coldly stared at the captain of the pirate ship, an imposing seven-foot specimen of a Klingon. Oh, how he would like to pulverize him and his vessel out into the next quadrant. But his mission was not to inflict punishment or revenge, he wanted his officers back and didn't care much about the Klingon pirates otherwise.

"You abducted two of my crew, and you're going to tell me where you took them."

The other captain snarled "You'll have to be more precise than that."

Archer stepped off his chair "I'm sure you remember a Human and a Vulcan."

The Klingon looked at him angrily, then sneered. "Ah, yes, the Vulcan. Very entertaining. Though she gave us a lot of trouble for someone so small." Trip paled, then flushed. The Klingon added "I almost considered buying her myself. But the Human is dead. And she's probably just bones by now."

Archer's hands clenched into fists "You killed him?"

"No, I didn't have the pleasure", the Klingon replied. "The son of a targ blew himself up when he tried to transport out."

"Transport out to where?" Trip blurted.

The Klingon eyed him with a smile full of malice. "Actually, I might tell you. See if you can survive there. That goddam forest cost me five of my men," he spat on the floor. "Perhaps you'll have more luck." He turned to Archer. "Go ahead and kill me, Captain, whether you do or not, you'll never find out."

Archer turned to Hoshi so that the Klingon captain could not see him, passed a finger across his neck. She dutifully cut the intercom. He turned to Trip "Do you have a read on their ion trail?"

"Sure do."

"Good, let's trace it back to where it came from." He motioned at Hoshi to open the channel again and turned back to the screen. "We don't need your help to find them. We'll take our leave now. Hope that the next ship that comes this way are not the Orions." Allies or not, if the Orions found a disabled Klingon ship they would not ask where their good luck came from before selling its crew.

The Klingon captain bellowed his rage but Archer already had Hoshi cut the communication. He turned to Ensign Kivich "Ensign, prepare to fire all torpedoes at once."

She looked at him in puzzlement. "Sir?"

Trip cut in "The Captain said to prepare to fire the torpedoes, not to fire them."

Archer nodded "We are going to leave and let them be. Unless they do something stupid."

At the exact same moment, Travis shouted "They are arming weapons sir, coming towards us at impulse power." He turned towards the captain in disbelief. Who would ever come after a starship disabled and at impulse power only?

Archer thinned his lips. "That's what I would call something stupid. Trip, how close are they to firing?"

Trip looked into the scanner, replied without raising his head. "They're going to be at maximum power in a few seconds. Nine, eight, six…" The bridge shook as the Klingon pirates made contact.

"Hull plating at 86%" Ensign Kivich reported.

The pirates weapons were stronger than one might have anticipated, Archer thought. The bridge shook again. Those bastards were trying to bring Enterprise down with them.

"Fire!" Archer's command erupted across the bridge. Ensign Kivich hesitated for a split second. Trip reached over from his console and hit the command, and the crew watched the pyrotechnics of the exploding Klingon transport.

As silence descended once more on the bridge, Archer and Trip stared at each other. Could it be that Reed was dead? Trip's heart sank. Reed might be dead and T'Pol was in mortal danger on some planet and there was nothing he could do to save her.

xxx

DAY TWELVE – morning

Malcom probably would never know what exactly was shrieking in the forest at night and he honestly didn't really care to know. He was glad the night was over. It had been harrowing enough between the screeches and the sensation that things were fluttering around him, never but almost touching. Once or twice he had had the feeling of something brushing against his face, soft and ghost-like. The nocturnal agitation calmed down a short while before dawn broke, and then T'Pol was right back to where she had been the day before. Actually, she was worse than the day before and if Reed hadn't had her well secured she would already have bolted before he could even fully wake up.

He looked up towards the top of the mountain, could glimpse a little bit of the rocky outcrop. They had made progress, but there were still a few hours of walking, especially if she was going to fight him all the way. Malcolm brushed himself off, straightened his uniform, and grabbed her by the arm, ready to fall into the position that had become familiar to them.

But this time T'Pol would have none of it and he barely avoided the pincher-grasp aimed at the junction of his neck and shoulder. He looked at her dilated pupils, noting they were showing no sign of shrinking back to anything normal, and sighed. He stepped around until he was approaching her from the side of her injured leg, shook his head in resignation, wondering how come it was always him that ended up in these situations, and looked at her with remorse. "I am so very sorry" he said, and then he clocked her. She went down like a leaf, but did not fall, held by Malcolm.

Before he knew it, a tendril had shot out from the tree next to them and gone straight through his calf. Malcolm screamed in agony and almost dropped her. Through the red curtain of pain that was wrapping around his brain, he managed to think about the dead Klingons and the organism single-minded quest for T'Pol. He held her against him, wagering that the forest organism would not be willing to harm her.

The gamble worked. Or simply the forest reacted in proportion to the harm done. The progression of the tendril stopped, but Malcolm could not move and the pain was enough to make him dizzy. He forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply, and eventually to look at his leg and the grossly protruding stick that was coming out of it at an odd angle.

The bleeding was not severe. He might survive, but how was he going to prevent T'Pol from leaving. He wished he had thought about the fact she was connected to the forest before he struck her. Obviously, the connection ran deep and the forest looked at any harm to her as harm to itself. He shouldn't be calling it the forest, anyway. What was it she said, nidara or something like that.

Malcolm thoughts came back to his predicament. He still held T'Pol against him, but she was going to regain consciousness soon enough. His original plans to use his uniform to restrain her, grab her in a fireman's carry and get her away from the forest were compromised, to say the least. He looked again at the shoot jutting out of his calf, trying to figure what he would need to do to unhook his leg. Unless he could make a standing jump four feet in the air, it looked like he was going to be stuck in place for a while. And he didn't dare break the tendril for fear the forest would strike again in response. Nor could he knock T'Pol out again for the same reason. He sighed.

xx

T'Pol started stirring and Malcolm held her even tighter. He knew that eventually she would get free and go back down to the organism and its jaws, but he was going to delay that as much as possible. She blinked and looked at him, and Malcolm saw with relief that her eyes looked normal.

"Lieutenant?" she asked. Malcolm just hoped she didn't remember his clocking her. That was an explanation he could wait on giving.

"Commander," he replied, "it looks like the tree attacked me." T'Pol stepped away from his embrace to look at the tendril coming out of his calf and Malcolm suddenly realized that the reason she came back to normal might be because she was no longer in contact with the trees. And remembered how the day before she had grabbed the trees for balance as she hobbled downhill. And how that night he had sought shelter between two clumps of trees, to find her worse in the morning. His holding her had somehow broken the connection. It was a temporary break, at best, he knew, but it gave him hope that he could perhaps delay things a bit longer.

T'Pol was inspecting the tendril and he noticed she knew better than to touch it or show any intention of breaking it. She looked up at him. "If you use me as a stepping stool, you should be able to get high enough to disengage from the shoot."

"Not with your leg, you won't be able to support my weight."

She nodded "but you could climb on my shoulders if I am seated."

It would be an awkward struggle and they may have to try several times but Malcolm didn't see a better way. "I guess we can try" he said.

T'Pol was looking intently into the distance and Malcolm suddenly got a sinking feeling. "T'Pol" he prompted. She didn't reply but took a step towards the trees. "T'Pol! Don't!" Malcolm called more urgently. She hobbled a couple of steps more to one of the trees, put her hand on it for balance.

And he knew he had lost her.

xxx

DAY TWELVE – Alpha Shift

Enterprise was following the ion trail of the blown up Klingon freighter. As time was of the essence, Archer had decided that. rather than stop everywhere the pirates' freighter had stopped, they would prioritize following the ion trail and take wide scans of potential planets as they passed by, dropping to impulse power for the scans.

He looked at the tan and green planet on the screen, remembering this was the second time they were seeing it. There had been no biosigns when they had passed it on the way back from the Orion processing station. He didn't expect any there would be any this one either, but hope sprang eternal.

Instead, Ensign Udaru confirmed the absence of biosigns. “Nothing showing on the sensors, Capatin.”

Silence fell on the bridge.

Hoshi was listening intently in her headpiece. She broke the silence, talking directly to the new ensign "There's really nothing?"

The young man straightened from his console "No biosigns at all. There is a faint magnetic signal, but nothing else."

His words sunk in, and then there was a collective double-take from Archer, Trip and Hoshi, all turning to look at the ensign in disbelief. Archer found his voice first "What do you mean a faint magnetic signal?" He was trying to keep his voice as level as possible.

"It's very faint, sir, and it could be natural."

Archer made a mental note to have the Ensign relocated to another starship at the next rotation, or preferably out an airlock. Before he could say anything Trip blurted in "And what natural phenomena do you think it might be coming from, Ensign?!" The ensign look flustered.

Trip started towards him and Archer realized what was going to happen in the split second before the engineer lunged. In a heartbeat he was out of his chair and had his arms wrapped around Trip, preventing him from advancing on the Ensign. "Commander Tucker! Trip!" he shouted to his friend as they struggled briefly. After a few seconds Trip looked at him with a faraway look in his eyes, as if he was wondering where he was and why he was being embraced by the Captain. "It's fine, Trip," Archer said "go back to your station."

Archer waited until Trip has stepped away before spinning on the ensign, who stood in place as if paralyzed by the turn of events. "Do you have an answer to Commander Tucker's question?" His tone was military-style curt, revealing the anger boiling underneath. When he saw that he wasn't going to get an answer, Archer talked to Hoshi, still looking straight at the ensign "Ensign Sato, please take over the science station. Mr. Udaru, you are relieved. Please exit the bridge" The ensign left hurriedly, finally getting an inkling that something bad had almost happened to him.

Archer looked towards Travis' console, saw that he had already stopped impulse power. The ship was moving purely on inertia. Good thinking Archer thought. Aloud, he said "Mr. Mayweather, put us in orbit around the planet."

Hoshi settled down in T'Pol's chair and started looking over sensor results, glad that she hadn't imagined what she thought she had heard on her headphones. She looked up after a few minutes "I have isolated the signal, Captain. It is really very faint. It could be that it's not what we think."

"Put it on audio, Ensign" All Archer cared about was that three days before when they had gone by the planet the signal had not been there and now it was. He listened with the rest of the bridge crew as static filled the bridge with an ever so slight undertone of a more focused sound every few seconds. Archer turned to Hoshi, eyes narrowed in suspicion "Is this something artificial or do you think it is a natural acoustic phenomena?"

 

"It does seem regular, Captain," she replied.

Trip was listening intently "Hoshi, can you modulate the frequency to neutralize the white noise?"

Hoshi started fiddling with toggles and dials as the sound filling the bridge changed 'xxcr…bee… xxcr…bee… xxcr…bee… xxcrizz…bee…' Suddenly her eyes rounded in excitation. "I know what this is, Captain!" she exclaimed.

"Hoshi?!"

She listened for a while longer, making sure "It's a battery chirping, sir. Whatever the cause, it is not a naturally occurring sound."

The bridge erupted in a flurry of activity.

xx

Four pillars of light shimmered into the distinctive forms of the landing party, Trip, two MACOs and Phlox. Archer had stayed on the bridge after an insistent Phlox had practically mandated that Trip join the landing party. Archer was down too many senior officers already to comfortably leave the Enterprise under the command of promising ensigns and for once he had stayed on board.

Three of the landing party were equipped with thermosensor eyepieces; Phlox was there in case anyone needed medical care and had no intention of getting distracted looking for their quarry.

Tucker took a look around, checked that they had landed a few yards from the fire pit. It was the discovery of the thermal reading of the ashes that had inspired them to go with thermosensing equipment. It seemed that thermal signatures were not dampened by the planet. And anything from Enterprise that was still alive would emit a thermal signature. After identifying the radio signal, they had beamed the source of the signal aboard, and found the two Universal Translators. That meant T'Pol and Lieutenant Reed had been alive two days before, based on the analysis of the trace DNA they had left on the UT chips.

Trip looked up at the rocky outcrop where they had found the UTs. He looked around to get a sense of the terrain, then gestured to the MACOs and they fanned out as per instructions. They were going to cover large swaths of land, staying in visual and communication contact at all times, Phlox following behind Trip, who would take the center position. Chang would take the flank along the stream, on his right, Canales would be on his left. Trip waited until they were in position then flexed his arm, fist at shoulder level. They proceeded downhill, relying on sight while slowly scanning from side to side with their termosensor-covered eyes.

xx

"Chang to Tucker, Chang to Tucker" Chang's voice was strained. Trip tapped his communicator patch. "Tucker here, what do you have."

"Five dead Klingons, sir."

Trip stopped mid-stride, Phlox, who wasn't paying attention to anything but his scanner, almost bumping into him.

"How long?" Trip asked, scanning furiously around him. He was not worried about any remaining Klingons, based on the pirate captain's reaction to the Klingons losing five men, they must have decamped as fast as they could. He was worried about the forest. The alien captain's prediction that T'Pol was now a heap of bones rang in his head.

"I don't know, sir, it looks to be a while, though." Trip nodded at Phlox, who left angling towards Chan. His mouth felt dry. The odds they would find T'Pol and Malcolm alive had just dropped by about half, he imagined.

No point getting all sentimental about it. "Keep on your guards" he talked back into the communicator patch, "and keep going." On his left, Canales, who had stopped to stay level with him and had heard the whole exchange, nodded. They stepped forward as one.

Twenty minutes later, Trip's communication patch buzzed again. "Commander Tucker"

"Yes, Dr. Phlox"

"I wanted to give you a preliminary report on the dead Klingons. They were impaled on shoots that grew out of the trees next to them, probably very quickly as I suspect they would have fled otherwise. I am not touching the wood, I wouldn't want the vegetation to get mad at me. But I think there's something you should know. The bodies are in a mild state of desiccation. Mild, but more advanced than the time of death would suggest, and there is no sign of rot."

"What are you telling me, doctor?" Trip wasn't sure why that was important.

"I am telling you, Commander, that the shoots that impaled the Klingons have started drawing fluids out of their bodies. I am not sure how far the natural process goes, but in the proper conditions the trees around you can be carnivorous. I would take all necessary precautions, and more, Commander."

"Got it, Doctor," Trip responded into the communication patch. "Are you with Chang?"

"I am in sight of Corporal Chang," Phlox responded.

"Good, stay with him."

"I'll wait for you, Doctor" Chang's voice sounded in their ears.

Tucker looked around at the trees lining the clearing where he was, wondering if he was going to be attacked. Now he would have to be on the lookout for errant roots, on top of trying to find T'Pol. He looked over at Canales, who he could hardly see through the trees but who seemed to have slowed down. Carnivorous trees. What else.

xxx

DAY TWELVE – afternoon

Malcolm was so thirsty he was actually considering breaking the tree shoot that was piercing his leg, so that he could go get water. The thought that if he did so the next attack from the tree might kill him was almost a welcome alternative. He just couldn't stand the thirst anymore. At least the wound was no longer bleeding, the blood had actually dried pretty fast around the opening.

T'Pol was gone for hours now and he didn't see how to get out of the trap he was in. Things were pretty dire indeed. Whichever positive jackass had said that so long as there was life there was hope was a jackass and nothing else. He would have liked to see him pegged to a tree in this forest and see how he liked it. _Come on, Malcolm, come on_ , he told himself. There must be a way out of his predicament. There had to be a way.

He had tried thinking about a wooden platform or a chair or a stool, anything he could use to raise himself off this damn stake, but the forest was not giving. Hell of a time to start withholding. He was starting to see the underpinnings of its working, how the forest had given him what he needed so that he would eventually try to grab it himself directly from a tree, and be turned into a pincushion for his trouble. This was a fairly evolved act of entrapment. He didn't see what use it served unless… God, he hoped that thing wasn't eating him already.

In the meantime he was so thirsty that he was starting to hallucinate. He could swear he had seen a bear up on the slope, shaking branches as it walked down. What was a bear doing on an alien planet? And what would a bear be doing in an alien forest where the only life forms were lemmings? He must be hallucinating.

xx

Chang was walking slowly and carefully, every so often sweeping ahead of him with his phasergun, ready to fire if anything attacked. The thermosensor was giving nothing, all he could see where the small red dots of those little furry things that disappeared underfoot. He cautiously stepped into the next clearing, all his senses on alert.

The next clearing was empty of everything but lemmings, once again. He could hear the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. Not that he was nervous, but that forest was creeping him out. Carnivorous trees. It was bad enough having to deal with blood-seeking aliens and the Expanse had been no walk in the park, but for some reason the thought of carnivorous trees just took it over the edge. He turned to check that Phlox was still behind him. The doctor had his scanner out and kept looking at it. Chang had to make sure he wouldn't fall or just bump into a tree.

He gestured Phlox behind him and together they walked onto the next clearing. Chang's head jerked up. Was that a reading down a couple of hundred yards away? He motioned to Phlox that he was going to go check, motioned him to stay put. He didn't know why he was not talking, but the least said about his intentions the better. Phlox stopped walking and looked up expectantly while Chang quickly crossed the clearing and slid into the next, trying to find the best vantage point. Suddenly he took off at a run, yelling "Lieutenant!" at the top of his lungs.

xx

Malcolm was still trying to discern if those were bears when he heard a blood-curling yell and knew instinctively that the Klingons had returned. It might not be the best outcome, but he would be happy to be sold into slavery if they just took him off this damn splinter. And knowing how much money T'Pol could bring, he was sure he could talk them into transporting her out too. Hoping they had fixed their transporter by now.

Suddenly the Klingon was on him, except he was not that big for a Klingon. Malcolm heard more cries, the rush of booted feet coming on to where he was.

"Lieutenant!" this time he understood the word. Why would a Klingon be speaking his Majesty's English? And what would Phlox be doing on a Klingon ship? His brain finally unfroze, and Malcolm realized he was staring at the faces of Corporal Chang and Doctor Phlox. They had found him! If he had not been so concerned with T'Pol, he might have cried for joy and relief. From the corner of his eye, he saw Trip running over. Phlox had his scanner out and was making disapproving noises over his leg. Malcolm didn't care. He needed to talk to Trip right away.

xxx

DAY TWELVE – afternoon

 _Gosh, where was T'Pol_? Trip thought for the umpteenth time. She couldn't be going that fast. They had all beamed aboard as being the quickest and safest way to get Malcolm off the barb the forest had him hooked on. That had worked and Phlox had stayed behind to take care of his wound. Based on what they had learned from Malcolm they had beamed back much lower on the mountain slope, but not so low that they would come too close to the thing Malcolm had said was living down at the bottom.

From there, Chang, Canales, and him had pretty much rolled down the rest of the hill, going as fast as they could. He went over what Malcolm had said once again. T'Pol was not herself, seemingly hypnotized by the forest that was not a forest but an extension of the mouth at its center, kind of like a sea anemone, Phlox had explained, except that sea anemones were much prettier to look at – unless you were their prey, he guessed.

The suns did not reach all the way to the bottom of the valley and the place was considerably darker, and cooler. Trip shivered instinctively, more from the gloomy feeling of the pervading darkness than from cold. All of a sudden he realized he was no longer walking among the trees. The forest had stopped just behind him, and he was in a sort of no-man's land of spongious dark ground, a dark loam that yielded under his feet. The incline was steeper. Any false step would lead to a slide of a few meters, at least. And then he saw the lake, pretty much like Malcolm had described, a phosphorous luminescent green shaped like a triangle, no more than a hundred yards away. A few seconds and the lake disappeared, the ground seeming to stop abruptly at the edge of a void.

His communicator patch beeped suddenly. "Canaleshere Iseeher" the words so fast as to being fused together. The rush of adrenaline almost made Trip dizzy but in its wake he found that he was more clearly and intently focused than he had ever been. "Where?!" he screamed back into the patch.

"Down from me, fifty yards towards you. She's about to jump, sir!"

"T'POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLL" if there had been any kind of avian life in the forest, it would have dropped from flight at the inhuman bellow that sounded. Tucker rushed headlong down the slope, towards Canales. He couldn't have cared less if he fell and rolled down over the edge. Suddenly he saw her, and then he was running and then he was about twenty yards from her and closing the gap. She stood on the edge of the obsidian abyss. She wavered slightly, seemed to hesitate. Trip threw everything he had into the bond in an attempt to telepathically reach her as he was physically closing in on her, mindful that she could just as easily slip and fall. T'Pol turned slightly towards him, her dazed eyes two lumps of charcoal from the dilated pupils. For half-a-second her pupils shrank back to normal "Trip?" she tentatively said, reaching out with her hand. Trip was almost there. And then as if in slow motion he saw her leg buckle and she was falling towards him and even if she fell on the ground she would slide into the void.

He was not going to let that happen.

He would never quite know how he managed to bridge the last couple of meters. Perhaps he jumped, perhaps all the sports he had played growing up coalesced into meaningfulness in that one split second where he somehow connected with her still half-outstretched arm, and grabbed her, then threw himself against the slope to slow their motion and gratefully collided with the braced body of Canales, who jumped on top of them to stop them, then rolled off just as quickly and started dragging him up the slope, while he had T'Pol in his arms and was not letting go, would never let go. Chang arrived right behind Canales, starting pulling with him.

And then they were safe.

They were a few yards up from the edge. T'Pol's eyes had grown huge again and she was struggling to free herself. Trip instinctively put his fingers on the psionic points on her face. For the first time in a long week he felt the bond return, the glow of what they shared soothing his soul. T'Pol eyes returned to their normal size. She looked at him uncomprehendingly and then exclaimed "Trip!" and rushed in his arms instead. "It's okay, it's okay" Trip soothed her, stroking her back. He motioned to Canales, who pulled out the beacons and set one on them.

They rematerialized on the transporter pad. Archer was there, Phlox at his side, waiting after having patched Malcom and dispatched him to Sickbay. Trip felt a weight slide off his arms and caught T'Pol just as she was about to crash on the floor. She was deathly pale, bleeding from the nose and mouth. Phlox rushed over with his scanner, his face betraying his agitation. "10 cc's cordrazine" he yelled at his aide, plunged a hypospray over her heart and then told Trip to start running to Sickbay as fast as he could. Trip had just laid her on a biobed when Phlox arrived, breathing hard, pushed him aside and took the biobed straight to the isolation unit, his aides on his heels.

Trip glared helplessly at the closed door. What the hell was going on? Someone was interfering again. He could feel the anger swelling up within him, knew that he was within seconds of throwing that door open and grabbing Phlox away from his bondmate. Perhaps he would bash a couple of heads in just for show. Suddenly the doors opened and Archer walked in, having let the medical teams rush ahead. He took one look at Trip and walked over, put a hand on his shoulder in a move that was comforting while it would allow him to quickly grab Trip if the engineer lost it. The physical contact seemed to be enough to defuse the situation. At the same moment the ICU door opened and Cutler stepped out. "Phlox says he will let you know in 24 hours", she gently told Trip, then went back in. Trip sat on a biobed, well decided to wait them out.

xxx

ONE DAY LATER

Phlox was as good as his word. The captain chair's intercom rang on the bridge "Phlox to Captain Archer." Archer looked over at Trip. It had been almost 24 hours.

"We'll be right there, Doctor." He nodded to Trip and the two of them left for the turbolift.

Following a call from Phlox telling him that Trip was spooking out his aides whenever they walked through Sickbay, looking at them with daggers in his eyes, Archer had refused to let Trip off his day shift, which had finally forced the engineer out of Sickbay and into a change of uniform. Archer had handed him a cup of coffee when he made it to the bridge knowing that the mess hall had been the last thing on Trip's mind. He was keeping a close eye on the engineer, aware, based on Phlox's warning that while T'Pol was back it would take a while for Trip's body to readjust and it was better to remain cautious.

They stepped together through the doors to Sickbay. Trip frowned. None of the biobeds were occupied. There was no sign of T'Pol. He threw a querying look at Phlox.

"T'Pol's in the isolation chamber" the doctor answered "in complete sensory seclusion. The creature attacked her telepathically when you transported back up. Fortunately the connection was severed really quickly." Phlox went on "We were able to revert the psionic shock but I wanted to talk to you both." Phlox glanced at Archer, who got a strong feeling that the doctor was worried about the engineer. "She will come out of isolation in a couple of hours, but it is very important" Phlox went on "to avoid stressing her psionic faculties for the next couple of days."

"How's Lieutenant Reed?" Archer cut in.

"I released Lieutenant Reed to his quarters this morning, Captain. The wound in his leg is healing nicely, no sign of infection. The dehydration from the organism starting to feed on him was fairly mild. Mild exposure, some malnutrition, he's going to need a couple of days but he'll be fine. Physically, T'Pol's in a little bit worse shape than Malcolm" Phlox went on "I understand she bore the brunt of the abuse from the Klingons." He seemed to be ticking off a mental list "A couple of broken ribs, bruised kidney, extensive contusions, some internal injuries but everything is already healing. The leg is going to take longer, hairline fracture of the femur with involvement of the acetabulofemoral and patellofemoral joints, that would be the coaxial and knee joints for you. That will require a fair amount of physical therapy. But the psionic shock is what I am really concerned about."

"When can I see her?" asked Trip

Phlox sighed. The message seemed to have gone straight over the engineer's head. He would have to be more forceful. He looked squarely at Trip "What I was saying, Mr. Tucker, is that it is extremely important that T'Pol not be disturbed by any heightened emotions or thoughts for the next couple of days. Which means that I am not sure that it is advisable for you to see her." Trip stood in silence, frowning. "You're not exactly safe to be around, Commander" Phlox added "no fault of yours but your hormones are running somewhat rampant."

"I know, doctor, but if I'm alone with T'Pol, there's nobody to trigger a reaction. Logically." Trip retorted. He and the doctor stood still for a few seconds, looking at each other fixedly, neither giving an inch. Finally Trip looked entreatingly at Phlox "I just need to see her. I can't explain it, but I need to. And I can control my thoughts." Phlox silently appraised the engineer and then relented, starting to get a small inkling about bonds. "I guess you could see her for a little while so long as you leave as soon as you feel you're slipping." Trip nodded.

"This way." Phlox led him to the isolation chamber. "I gave her something for the pain, it is not strong enough to knock her out but don't expect her to carry on a conversation. Remember to be extremely careful about what you think."

Trip had never been in the isolation booth before and he could see where it got its name. The sensation was akin to stepping into a velvet pad. The lights were kept so low that the room was bathed in light greys, the absence of sound made him feel like his ears were stuffed with cotton, there was just an… absence… of everything he took for granted. Even the air was at a standstill.

T'Pol was lying on the biobed with her eyes closed. Trip's eyes went right to the stimulcast that was encasing her right leg from hip to ankle and he carefully and consciously thought about nothing. He approached the bed and she opened her eyes. "Hey, you," he smiled at her. She raised her hand from under the sheet that was covering her to touch his fingers, closing her eyes again. He carefully kept his mind a blank slate, counting from one to one hundred over and over so that she would not be able to sense any thoughts or emotions. When he felt that his mind was about to stray no matter how hard he tried, he took her hand and gently put it back under the covers.

Trip's smile became a little tight as he realized that side of her torso was covered with fading hematomas but he managed to stop his reaction by going back to the count of one. T'Pol's eyes opened a sliver and he held his breath, worried that perhaps she had felt that millisecond of anger from him. When he got to one hundred again and there did not seem to have been any adverse effect from his emotional slip, he leaned over. "You go ahead and rest" he whispered to her. "I'll be back." And he noiselessly exited the isolation chamber.

It was only once he was outside, after he took a few more steps for extra safety, that Trip allowed the rush of feelings to wash over him all at once, anger and relief mixing in equal parts. His fists clenched instinctively. Eventually, his hormone levels would creep back to normal. In the meantime, he couldn't wait to tell her what had happened to the Klingons.

xxx

A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER

"Your carriage is advanced, your highness" Trip announced as he entered Sickbay, pushing the wheelchair in front of him.

T'Pol was being released from Sickbay, though it would be a while before she was out of the cast or back on duty. Trip saw with pleasure that the curtains around her biobed had been pulled open. And then he saw the dark head of Lieutenant Reed bent over her and a rush of murderous rage rose through him. Reed looked up. Before either man knew what happened, the wheelchair was spinning on itself towards the door and Malcolm was slammed against the nearest wall, Trip's forearm firmly against his neck.

"Commander Tucker!" "Trip!"

The shouts rang in unison from T'Pol and Phlox. The shout from T'Pol was followed by a gasp as she turned white as a sheet. That cut through Trip's anger. He shook his head, releasing his hold, eyes wide at what he had almost done, looking from Reed to T'Pol.

Phlox rushed to T'Pol's side, scanner at the ready. He frowned and administered a hypo, then turned on Trip. "Commander Tucker" Phlox's voice was hitting the high octaves "this is exactly what I was trying to prevent. I cannot have you undo the medical care I provide or assault the crew any time they interact with T'Pol. If you cannot control yourself, I'll have to bar your entry to Sickbay. You can see T'Pol when you can handle things again, perhaps after she's out of a wheelchair."

Trip looked sheepishly at Phlox. "I'm sorry, doc, I don't know what came over me…"

"That is exactly the issue" Phlox cut him off. "How can you control yourself if you don't know what's happening!"

"I will control myself, doctor, I swear I will." Trip was looking at T'Pol, knowing that now that he knew the effect his lack of control could have on her he would be damned before he let it happen again.

"See that you do, Commander." Phlox was obviously displeased, a rare state for him.

Malcolm was glaring at Trip with narrowed eyes. "I think I should go," he said icily to no one in particular. "Thank you, Lieutenant" Phlox gently dismissed him. Malcolm left Sickbay without a backwards glance at his – former, as far as he was concerned – friend.

Phlox took another scanner read of T'Pol, relief etched on his face. "I'll let you reflect on things," he threw at Trip before he walked back to his office, leaving the two commanders staring at each other.

Trip looked dejectedly at T'Pol. Her color had returned but she didn't say anything. "I'm sorry, I don't know what happened," Trip started.

"You do know what happened" she cut him off "you thought that Lieutenant Reed and I are having an intimate relationship."

"But that's the thing, I don't think you are and I know you're not." Trip hurried to talk before she shut him out for good. "But when you were on the planet, our bond felt all weird and apparently it started a chain reaction and there's a part of me that went supernova and I've been turning into Mr. Hyde at the drop of a hat." One of T'Pol eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. "It's a movie, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, perhaps we can show it for movie night." Trip added. The other eyebrow disappeared in turn. "Please say something" Trip finally pleaded, when the silence stretched beyond his ability to stand it.

T'Pol looked at him appraisingly "You are reacting like a bonded Vulcan male would if he thought his bondmate was being intimate with another male. But you are not Vulcan…" she let the thought trail pensively. Another anomaly of their bond, perhaps. There were so many ways they were breaking new ground with their relationship.

xx

Trip waited at Malcolm's door, part of him wishing that Malcolm would refuse to answer, but instead the door opened. "Commander Tucker" Malcolm's voice was icy.

"May I come in?"

Malcolm simply nodded. Trip stepped in, let the door close behind him. Malcolm still hadn't shaved the beard that had grown while they were missing.

Trip uncharacteristically hesitated "Listen, buddy," he started, then shook his head "I've been kind of messed up lately, with T'Pol missing and stuff. I took it out on that trader on Thanat III, and almost took it out on Ensign Udaru, he's in the science department. I'd never thought I would jump on my best friend... especially after what you did, I know you're the only reason we found the two of you alive and that you essentially saved her life and I can't tell you how grateful I am for it" he waited, hopeful that Malcolm would read his explanation as an apology.

Malcolm had been angry when Trip had started speaking, but he had known before he even opened the door that Trip would apologize in his own way and that he would accept his apology after a fashion and that the two would leave each other huffed up and feathers a-ruffle, but it would all be over by the next day. He had planned to make the engineer grovel a little, as payback for the fact he could even think he was making a move on T'Pol. He found that personally offensive.

But instead he was distracted by something Trip had said. Malcolm had been fully debriefed about what happened to him and T'Pol since they left Enterprise but had been on the sick list for the past couple of days and hadn't really been in the loop on the other side of the story. "What do you mean the trader at Thanat III?" he asked.

Half-an-hour later, Trip exited Malcolm's cabin, relieved that things were back to normal between them, leaving Malcolm sitting on his bed imagining his next encounter with Seel Ewri.

xxx

MANY DAYS LATER

Seel Ewri smiled as he took the control of his personal spacecraft. She had cost him a pretty penny, but he had decided to treat himself. He had had several good months in a row, his little scheme with the Klingons had made him rich beyond expectations, and as an additional sign the gods were looking favorably upon him, the Klingon ship had disappeared and all indications were that it had been blown into a field of debris. His fear and conviction that the Klingons would eventually turn on him was no longer a worry.

He broke orbit to re-enter the atmosphere of Thanat III. Tonight, he would be sleeping in his new vacation home, with an address that automatically set him among the wealthier of his colleagues. He smiled, enjoying the thought of the many paths of debauchery he would be exploring all weekend long. His smiled turned to a frown as the sound of one of his engines died down. He looked at the gauges in front of him. One of his engines had failed. How could it be, this was a brand new ship. The other gauges showed everything was in working order. At that moment, the noise of the other engine die down as well, and Seel Ewri felt the first stab of panic twist in his gut. He grabbed the controls, willing the spacecraft to make a smooth emergency landing. Instead, the side thrusters came on, sending the small vessel into an elliptical spiral and bringing Seel Erwi's stomach up to his mouth. He tried to regain control of the craft but the helm had stopped responding. He saw the looming mountains of Aasdef come increasingly close on the windscreen. He started screaming. And kept screaming all the way until the vessel exploded against the tallest spire.

It was a small accident, carefully reported in the daily reports of the trading outpost on Thanat III. Nobody paid attention to it, not the policeman who wrote it nor the clerk who checked it before entering it into the central database nor the editor who checked the byline in the local news. The news bounced along the transmission channels from space station to space station until it reached Earth, where it pinged on to the desk of one individual in San Francisco. The man read it, nodded, then turned around and entered a simple substellar message into his computer. It would take weeks to arrive, but time was not of the essence.

It took a few months for the data packet to make it to its destination. It passed all clearances and landed into the inbox of a certain communication officer. Who alerted a certain security officer that she had received a communication packet for him and passed it on. The security officer opened the data packet on his computer screen. A thin smile played on his lips when he finished reading. Knowing Harris, Seel Ewri's death had been somewhat unpleasant. Malcolm shook his head. Payback indeed.


End file.
